Music and poetry have long been part of dissent, a tool of resistance, and an art form to express concerns, jubilation, remembrance, and heartbreaks. They are worthy forms of summation for many situations.
The musicians, singers, poets, and folk artists are admired a lot for their work, and for some, they are the only source of solace to bear their sufferings. Surprisingly, in the foothills of Lolab Valley, border district of Kupwara, at a marriage hall, I witnessed a young boy of 17 years singing a ghazal written by his grandfather who was a poet and shot dead by Ikhwans, a dreaded militia funded by the Indian government, mostly made up of former renegades of various armed groups, who initially picked up guns against the Indian rule, but with time, loyalties switched, now are henchmen of the Indian military. These cutthroats can cross any limit to satisfy their masters and silence any voice that opposes this mafia culture in our cursed land. Though I have no regrets nor any necessity to question why Ikhwans were created, many of my friends from academia keep on having a lingering faith about pressing the state apparatus and expecting impunity. I remember the words of late Prime Minister Pandit Nehru who said democracy and morality can wait for this place. The policymaking is still the same, the Indian state and the mindset in the south block and all the vicious blocks believe in establishing the rule of law, freedom of expression, and dance of democracy is showered only at seasons to keep the mask of democracy intact.
Before diving into the jargon of insurgency, let me come back to music only. Kashmiri-American poet and professor at the University of Massachusetts Agha Shahid Ali used to listen to the queen of ghazal, Begum Akhtar, and had even met her in childhood. I had also discovered her in a very uncanny way on short-wave and medium-wave radio frequencies used to run by battery cells, as electricity was a rare commodity in the hills of Pir Panjal during my childhood days.
Shahid quotes her as a memoir of one of the most heartbreaking moments when the town of Charare-Sharief was burning and was under siege.
The hostess pours tea, hands me the Statesman 31 October 1974 :
Begum Akhtar is dead: under the headline.
Her picture : She smiles she lights a
capstan Sharp in flame, her face dissolves
in smoke
IT’S
WAR
Its 1994 : Army lays siege to shrine.
Unfortunately, our brave orator, narrator, and lover, dear Shahid, died due to a brain tumour at the age of fifty-two in his favorite town of Amherst, where his beloved poetess Emily Dickinson used to live once. I am always bereaved by his early death, who would narrate stories of Cashmere to the world now. Shahid means Beloved in Persian and witness or martyr in Arabic, and he was a conglomeration of all three.
As I keep on slipping, let’s flip back to the dissent and expression. In Indian schools, as we enter our ninth standard we are taught about democracy in the first chapter of our civics/social studies books, especially in CBSE and state board, it talks about Salvador Allende, the first democratic elected President of Chile, who was later killed by CIA backed military Coup. NCERT explains it in the most romanticized way ever possible how his presidential palace was surrounded by the military, hundreds of his supporters were arrested and shot, how his bodyguards took a last stand, and his decisive moments before being shot dead.
Similarly, a pall of grief, death, and oppression fell upon thousands of students, civil society members, and artists. One was a Chilean teacher, writer, and singer Victor Jara. Following the coup, Pinochet’s soldiers rounded up Chileans suspected of involvement with leftist groups, including Allende’s Popular Unity party. On the morning of September 12, 1973, Jara was taken prisoner along with thousands of others and was imprisoned inside Estadio Chile. Shortly after that, he was killed by a gunshot to the head, and his body was riddled with over 40 bullets.
There are many conflicting accounts of Jara’s last days, but the 2019 Netflix documentary “Massacre at the Stadium” pieces together a convincing narrative. As a famous musician and prominent supporter of Allende, Jara was swiftly recognized upon entering the stadium. An army officer threw a lit cigarette on the ground, made Jara crawl for it, and then stamped on his wrists. Jara was first separated from the other detainees, then beaten and tortured in the bowels of the stadium. At one point, he defiantly sang “Venceremos (We Will Win),” Allende’s 1970 election anthem, through split lips. On the morning of the 16th, according to a fellow detainee, Jara asked for a pen and a notebook and scribbled the lyrics of “Estadio Chile,” which were later smuggled out of the stadium: “How hard it is to sing when I must sing of horror, horror which I am living, horror which I am dying.” Two hours later, he was shot dead, and his body was pestered with machine-gun bullets and disposed of in the street. He was 40. Today Chile is a democracy the song Venceremos is on the lips of millions of Latin Americans, a ballad of the brave teacher and singer Victor Jara.
In this world, much like the dance of fire and water, clashes are inevitable. Wherever oppression exists, resilience emerges. Countless inspiring stories abound, some well-known and many more hidden from view. I transcend further, in the Caucasus region, southern Russia, a mountain region and homeland of Chechens, Chechneya. As the Soviet Union broke, Chechneya also declared independence, but it was short-lived, followed by two wars, the Ist and 2nd Chechen Wars. In Between this, Imam Alimsultanov, a Chechen folk singer born in Kyrgyzstan, had been relocated as a result of the forced deportations of most Chechens and Ingush to Central Asia on February 23, 1944. Some of us are so unfortunate that we are born as refugees, children of conflict, with circumstances beyond our control dictated by fate.
Sometimes I can not comprehend this reality, to console myself I think of a line written by Frantz Fanon “There is not in the world one single poor lynched bastard, one poor tortured man, in whom I am not also murdered and humiliated”.
When the First Chechen War began in December 1994, Alimsultanov was briefly detained after a performance and was sent to a Russian detention camp in Khankala. Although he was there for a night, he endured humiliation and beatings. During the war, Alimsultanov performed for Chechen fighters and, at the request of Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev, accompanied wounded Chechen civilians and combatants to Turkey. He performed extensively in Istanbul, Konya, and other cities raising funds for the displaced.
He decided to travel to Istanbul via the city of Odesa. The mayor of Odesa at the time, Eduard Gurwits, provided Alimsultanov with a musical theatre hall, where he performed multiple times. One night three men from the Russian FSB shot Alimsultanov dead while performing in Odesa. Another tragic end, a refugee, a beloved son, an engineer, a soldier, and a singer gave away his life on a stage for the deeply desired independence, he had wished for Chechens.
Coming back to the recently read and famous novels of Khaled Hosseini, Kite Runner, and A Thousand Splendid Sun, at one point he talks about Ahmed Zaheer, also known as Elvis Presley of Afghanistan. An Afghan singer from Laghman province, who used to sing romantic melodies, despite being in a conservative society. His songs were popular all across the Durand line, from Peshawar to Kabul. Even I have listened to a few, one which is famous to date, Oh bano bano jaana, shehar bano jaana, where he talks about the love of his life, her hair curls, tantrums, shyness, and fear of a shattered heart.
As a soviet supported regime was ruling Afghanistan, one of the songs cost his own life dearly where he discussed God, the Quran, and help from the almighty God. He was murdered on a highway near Salang tunnel, though his legacy left, any wedding you attend, is incomplete without his Pashto and Dari songs. He is admired by many across Afghanistan and northern Pakistan.
In the face of extreme oppression, music and poetry remain steadfast as powerful tools of resistance, offering solace, preserving memories, and inspiring resilience in the hearts of those who dare to dream of a better world.
Musharraf Hussain is a student at IISC Bangalore
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