TALES OF TRAVESTY
dR. JITENDRA SINGH
Whether Geelani has made any headway in his “Azaadi” movement or not, interestingly enough “Azaadi” of sorts has come to an unlikely section of State population comprising the Durbar move ministers, officers and employees who seem to be stretching up their arms in relief and taking a deep breath of freedom in the liberated environs of Jammu. From Geelani’s ‘‘Hartal’’ calendar to winter capital’s reception calendar, from Srinagar’s stone pelters to Jammu’s sycophants, there is indeed a realization of “Azaadi” after six months of confinement.
Even though the Durbar offices will open in Jammu tomorrow with symbolic protests from here and there, this initial tokenism will soon pass off and then the Durbar ministers and their henchmen would be, as usual, treated to pompous feasts, functions and felicitations by traditionally hospitable organizations and socalled ‘prominent” citizens of Jammu.Experience from the past bears out that majority of Jammu goes with the ruling polity while the miniscule opposition kills itself with everybody fighting against everybody.
Notwithstanding short-lived reincarnation of self-respect following Amarnath land agitation of 2008, majority of the public and civil society activists of Jammu, unfortunately continue to be slaves of a feudal mind-set which ends up turning them into compulsive obeisance makers at the mere sight of a white Ambassador car with a red light. A common observation is that anybody who is somebody in the State Government hierarchy or anybody who is nobody but claims access to State corridors of power is received with awe by Jammuites while a simple cup of tea offered by a lower-rung minister or a lower-rung bureaucrat to a Jammu activist is enough to sweep the latter off his feet.
Meanwhile, as far as the common man is concerned, Durbar in Jammu will be marked with six months of heightened traffic congestion and nagging traffic jams, nuisance of security vehicles and long queues of desperate persons lined up outside Secretariate gate waiting to gain entry for redressal of a pending file or application. And, the Jammu origin bureaucrats, who turn bitterest critics of State Government’s “Kashmir-centric” policies soon after their retirement or shall one call them “post – retirement” nationalists, but act more loyal-than-king while in service and make use of these six months in Jammu to host sumptuous Eid feasts and “Iftar” parties for their bosses, thus facelessly living upto Umapathy’s reference to Akbar Allahabadi’s poetic refrain ‘‘Qaum Ke Gham Mein Dinner Khaatey Hain Hukkam Ke Saath, Ranj Leader Ko Bahut Hain Magar Aaram Ke Saath!’’
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