The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

by Arundhati Roy

  On the day Manzoor Ahmed Ganai was killed, smiling soldiers opened the door of his father’s cell. “Jenaab, you wanted Azadi? Mubarak ho aapko. Congratulations! Today your wish has come true. Your freedom has come.”

  The people of the village cried more for the shambling wreck who came running through the orchard in rags with wild eyes and a beard and hair that hadn’t been cut in a year and a half than they did for the boy who had been murdered.

  The shambling wreck was just in time to be able to lift the shroud and kiss his son’s face before they buried him.

  Q 1: Why did the villagers cry more for the shambling wreck?

  Q 2: Why did the wreck shamble?

  NEWS

  Kashmir Guideline News Service

  Dozens of Cattle Cross Line of Control (LoC) in Rajouri

  At least 33 cattle including 29 buffaloes have crossed over to Pakistan side in Nowshera sector of Rajouri district in Jammu and Kashmir.

  According to KGNS, the cattle crossed the LoC in Kalsian sub-sector. “The cattle which belong to Ram Saroop, Ashok Kumar, Charan Das, Ved Prakash and others were grazing near LoC when they crossed over to other side,” locals told KGNS.

  Tick the Box:

  Q 1: Why did the cattle cross the LoC?

  (a) For training

  (b) For sneak-in ops

  (c) Neither of the above

  THE PERFECT MURDER (J’s story)

  This happened a few years ago, before I resigned from the service. Maybe in 2000 or 2001. I was at the time DySP, Deputy Superintendent of Police, posted in Mattan.

  One night at about 11:30 p.m. we got a call from a neighboring village. The caller was a villager, but he wouldn’t reveal his name. He said there had been a murder. So we went. I, along with my boss, the SP. It was in January. Very cold. Snow everywhere.

  We arrived in the village. The people were all inside their houses. Doors were locked. Lights were off. It had stopped snowing. The night was clear. Full moon. The moonlight was reflecting off the snow. You could see everything very clearly.

  We saw the body of a person, a big strong man. He was lying in the snow. He had been freshly killed. His blood had flooded on to the snow. It was still warm. It had melted the snow. The snow was still steaming. He lay there as though he was being cooked…

  You could tell that after his throat had been slit he had dragged himself about thirty meters to knock on the door of a house. But out of fear nobody had opened the door, so he had bled to death. As I said, he was a big strong man, so there was a lot of blood. He was dressed in Pathan clothes—salwar kameez—he wore a camouflage bulletproof vest, and an ammunition belt full of ammunition. An AK-47 was lying near him. We had no doubt he was a militant—but who had killed him? If it had been the army of course they would have removed the body and claimed the Kill immediately. If it had been a rival militant group they would have taken his weapon. This was a big puzzle for us.

  We rounded up the villagers and questioned them. Nobody admitted to seeing or hearing or knowing anything. We took the body back with us to the Mattan police station. There my SP called the Commanding Officer of the Rashtriya Rifle (RR) camp—the army camp—nearby to ask if he knew anything about it. Nothing.

  It wasn’t hard to identify the body. He was a well-known, very senior militant commander. He belonged to the Hizb. Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. But nobody claimed the Kill. So eventually the army CO and my SP decided to claim it. They announced that he had been killed in an encounter following a Search-and-Cordon operation conducted jointly by the RR and JKP (Jammu and Kashmir Police).

  The story appeared in the national press as follows: In a fierce gun battle that lasted several hours a dreaded militant was killed in a joint operation by the Rashtriya Rifles and the Jammu and Kashmir Police led by Major XX and Superintendent of Police YY.

  Both of us, the RR and JKP, were given citations and we shared the cash reward. We handed the militant’s body over to his family and made discreet inquiries about whether they had any idea who killed him. We made no headway.

  Seven days later, in another village, another Hizb militant was found beheaded. He was the second-in-command of the first man whose body we had found. The Hizb owned up to the killing. Privately they let it be known that he was killed for having murdered his commander and stolen twenty-five lakhs in cash that was meant for distribution among the cadre.

  The story in the national press appeared as follows:

  Gruesome Beheading of Innocent Civilian by Militants

  Q 1: Who is the hero of this story?

  THE INFORMER—I

  In the notified area of Tral. A village called Nav Dal. It’s 1993. The village is bristling with militants. It’s a “liberated” village. The army is camped on the outskirts, but soldiers daren’t enter the village. It’s a complete stand-off. No villagers approach the army camp. There is no exchange of any sort between soldiers and villagers.

  And yet, the officer commanding the camp knows every move the militants make. Which villagers support the Movement, which ones don’t, who offers militants food and lodging willingly, who doesn’t.

  For days a close watch is mounted. Not a single person goes to the camp. Not a single soldier enters the village. And yet, the information gets to the army.

  Finally the militants notice a sleek black bull from the village who regularly visits the camp. They intercept the bull. Tied to his horns, along with an assortment of taveez (to keep him from illness, from the evil eye, from impotence), are little notes with information.

  The next day the militants attach an IED to the bull’s horns. They detonate it as he approaches the camp. No one dies. The bull is severely injured. The village butcher offers to do “halal” so the villagers can at least feast on the meat.

  The militants pass a fatwa. It’s an Informer Bull. Nobody is allowed to eat the meat.

  Amen.

  Q 1: Who is the hero of the story?

  THE INFORMER—II

  He liked selling out on people, for this dehumanized him. Dehumanizing myself is my own most fundamental tendency.

  Jean Genet

  I’m not yet cured of happiness.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Q 1: Who is the hero of the story?

  THE VIRGIN

  The fidayeen attack that had been planned on the army camp was aborted at the last minute by none other than the fidayeen themselves. They took this decision because Abid Ahmed alias Abid Suzuki, the driver of the Maruti Suzuki they were in, was driving really badly. The little car veered sharply to the left, then sharply to the right, as though it was dodging something. But the road was empty and there was nothing to dodge. When Abid Suzuki’s companions (none of whom knew how to drive) asked him what the matter was, he said it was the houris who had come to take them all to heaven. They were naked and dancing on the bonnet, distracting him.

  There’s no way to ascertain whether the naked houris were virgins or not.

  But Abid Suzuki certainly was one.

  Q 1: Why was Abid Suzuki driving badly?

  Q 2: How do you establish a man’s virginity?

  THE BRAVEHEART

  Mehmood was a tailor in Budgam. His greatest desire was to have himself photographed posing with guns. Finally a school friend of his who had joined a militant group took him to their hideout and made his dream come true. Mehmood returned to Srinagar with the negatives and took them to Taj Photo Studio to have prints made. He negotiated a 25-paisa discount for each print. When he went to pick up his prints the Border Security Force laid a cordon around Taj Photo Studio and caught him red-handed with the prints. He was taken to a camp and tortured for many days. He did not give away any information. He was sentenced to ten years in jail.

  The militant commander who facilitated the photography session was arrested a few months later. Two AK-47s and several rounds of ammunition were recovered from him. He was released after two months.

  Q 1: Was it worth it?

  THE CAREERIST

  The bo
y had always wanted to make something of himself. He invited four militants for dinner and slipped sleeping pills into their food. Once they had fallen asleep he called the army. They killed the militants and burned down the house. The army had promised the boy two canals of land and one hundred and fifty thousand rupees. They gave him only fifty thousand and accommodated him in quarters just outside an army camp. They told him that if he wanted a permanent job with them instead of being just a daily wage worker he would have to get them two foreign militants. He managed to get them one “live” Pakistani but was having trouble finding another. “Unfortunately these days business is bad,” he told PI. “Things have become such that you cannot any longer just kill someone and pretend he’s a foreign militant. So my job cannot be made permanent.”

  PI asked him, if there was a referendum whom he would vote for, India or Pakistan?

  “Pakistan of course.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it is our Mulk (country). But Pakistan militants can’t help us in this way. If I can kill them and get a good job it helps me.”

  He told PI that when Kashmir became a part of Pakistan, he (PI) would not be able to survive in it. But he (the boy) would. But that, he said, was just a theoretical matter. Because he would be killed shortly.

  Q 1: Who did the boy expect to be killed by?

  (a) The army

  (b) Militants

  (c) Pakistanis

  (d) Owners of the house that was burned

  THE NOBEL PRIZE WINNER

  Manohar Mattoo was a Kashmiri Pandit who stayed on in the Valley even after all the other Hindus had gone. He was secretly tired of and deeply hurt by the barbs from his Muslim friends who said that all Hindus in Kashmir were actually, in one way or another, agents of the Indian Occupation Forces. Manohar had participated in all the anti-India protests, and had shouted Azadi! louder than everybody else. But nothing seemed to help. At one point he had even contemplated taking up arms and joining the Hizb, but eventually he decided against it. One day an old school friend of his, Aziz Mohammed, an intelligence officer, visited him at home to tell him that he was worried for him. He said that he had seen his (Mattoo’s) surveillance file. It suggested that he be put under watch because he displayed “anti-national tendencies.”

  When he heard the news Mattoo beamed and felt his chest swell with pride.

  “You have given me the Nobel Prize!” he told his friend.

  He took Aziz Mohammed out to Café Arabica and bought him coffee and pastries worth Rs 500.

  A year later he (Mattoo) was shot by an unknown gunman for being a kafir.

  Q 1: Why was Mattoo shot?

  (a) Because he was a Hindu

  (b) Because he wanted Azadi

  (c) Because he won the Nobel Prize

  (d) None of the above

  (e) All of the above

  Q 2: Who could the unknown gunman have been?

  (a) An Islamist militant who thought all kafirs should be killed

  (b) An agent of the Occupation who wanted people to think that all Islamist militants thought that all kafirs should be killed

  (c) Neither of the above

  (d) Someone who wanted everyone to go crazy trying to figure it out

  KHADIJA SAYS…

  In Kashmir when we wake up and say “Good Morning” what we really mean is “Good Mourning.”

  THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’

  Begum Dil Afroze was a well-known opportunist who believed, quite literally, in changing with the times. When the Movement seemed to be on the up and up, she would set the time on her wristwatch half an hour ahead to Pakistan Standard Time. When the Occupation regained its grip she would reset it to Indian Standard Time. In the Valley the saying went, “Begum Dil Afroze’s watch isn’t really a watch, it’s a newspaper.”

  Q 1: What is the moral of this story?

  APRIL FOOL’S DAY 2008: Actually it’s April Fool’s night. All night the news comes in sporadically, relayed from mobile phone to mobile phone: “Encounter” in a village in Bandipora. The BSF and STF say they received specific information that there were militants—the Chief of Operations of the Lashkar-e-Taiba and some others—in a house in the village of Chithi Bandi. There was a crackdown. The encounter went on all night. Past midnight the army announced that the operation had been successful. They said that two militants had been killed. But the police said there were no bodies.

  I went with P to Bandipora. We left at dawn.

  From Srinagar to Bandipora the road winds through mustard fields. Wular Lake is glassy, inscrutable. Slim boats preen on it like fashion models. P tells me that recently, as part of “Operation Good Will,” the army took twenty-one children on a picnic in a navy boat. The boat overturned. All twenty-one children drowned. When the parents of the drowned children protested they were shot at. The luckier ones died.

  Bandipora is “liberated,” they say. Like Sopore once was. Like Shopian still is. Bandipora is backed up against the high mountains. When we reached we found that the crackdown hadn’t ended.

  The villagers said it had begun at 3:30 p.m. the previous day. People were forced out of their homes at gunpoint. They had to leave their houses open, hot tea not yet drunk, books open, homework incomplete, food on the fire, the onions frying, the chopped tomatoes waiting to be added.

  There were more than a thousand soldiers, the villagers said. Some said four thousand. At night terror is magnified, the leaves in the Chinar trees must have looked like soldiers. As the crackdown wore on, and dawn broke, it was not just the occasional gunshots that tore through people, but also the softer sounds, of their cupboards being opened, their cash and jewelry being stolen, their looms being smashed. Their cattle being barbecued alive in their pens.

  A big house belonging to a poet’s brother had been razed. It was a heap of rubble. No bodies had been found. The militants had escaped. Or perhaps they were never there.

  But why was the army still there? Soldiers with machine guns, shovels and mortar launchers controlled the crowd.

  More news:

  Two young men have been picked up from a petrol pump nearby.

  The crowd goes rigid.

  The army has already announced that they’ve killed two militants here in Chithi Bandi. So now it has to produce bodies. The people know how real life works. Sometimes the script is written in advance.

  “If the bodies of those boys are freshly burned we won’t accept the army story.”

  Go India! Go Back!

  People catch sight of a soldier standing in the village mosque, looking down at them. He hasn’t taken his boots off in the holy place. A howl goes up. Slowly the barrel of the gun rises and takes aim. The air shrinks and grows hard.

  A shot rings out from the poet’s brother’s ex-house. It’s an announcement. The army is going to withdraw. The village road isn’t wide enough for us and them, so to make room for them we flatten ourselves against the walls of houses. The soldiers file through. Hooting pursues them like the wind whistling down the village road. You can sense the soldiers’ anger and shame. You can sense their helplessness too. That could change in a second.

  All they have to do is to turn around and shoot.

  All the people have to do is to lie down and die.

  When the last soldier has gone, the people climb over the debris of the burnt house. The tin sheets that were once the roof are still smoldering. A scorched trunk lies open, flames still leaping out of it. What was in it that burns so beautifully?

  On the small, smoky mountain of rubble, the people stand and chant:

  Hum Kya Chahtey?

  Azadi!

  And they call for the Lashkar:

  Aiwa Aiwa!

  Lashkar-e-Taiba!

  —

  More news comes.

  Mudasser Nazir has been picked up by the STF.

  His father arrives. His breathing is shallow. His face is ashen. An autumn leaf in spring.

  They’ve taken his boy to the camp.

&n
bsp; “He’s not a militant. He was injured in a protest last year.”

  “They’re saying if you want your son back, then send us your daughter. They say she’s an OGW—an overground worker. That she helps a Hizb Man transport his things.”

  Maybe she does, maybe she doesn’t. Either way, she’s a goner.

  —

  I’ll help a Hizb Man transport his things.

  And then he’ll kill me for being me.

  Bad, uncovered woman.

  Indian

  Indian?

  Whatever

  So it goes.

  NOTHING

  I would like to write one of those sophisticated stories in which even though nothing much happens there’s lots to write about. That can’t be done in Kashmir. It’s not sophisticated, what happens here. There’s too much blood for good literature.

  Q 1: Why is it not sophisticated?

  Q 2: What is the acceptable amount of blood for good literature?

  THE LAST ENTRY in the notebook was an army press release, pasted on to one of the pages:

  PRESS INFORMATION BUREAU (DEFENSE WING) GOVERNMENT OF INDIA PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICE, MINISTRY OF DEFENSE, SRINAGAR

  GIRLS OF BANDIPORA LEFT FOR EXCURSION

  Bandipora 27 September: Today was an important day in the life of 17 girls of village Erin and Dardpora of Bandipora district when their 13 days SADHBHAVANA Tour to Agra, Delhi and Chandigarh was flagged off by Mrs. Sonya Mehra and Brigadier Anil Mehra, Commander, 81 Mountain Brigade from Fishery grounds of Erin Village. These girls accompanied by two elderly women and two panches from the area along with officials of 14 Rashtriya Rifles. They will visit places of historical and educational interest at Agra, Delhi and Chandigarh. They would have a privilege of interacting with Governor of Punjab and of their own state.