Javed Akhtar, one of the most evocative lyricists of our time, once delivered a piercing observation about human hypocrisy. “Everyone talks about saving wildlife and calls the killing of animals inhuman, but no one talks about stopping fishing,” he remarked. In this, he pointed towards a silent cruelty we normalize. Fishing, often romanticized as a tranquil, meditative practice, hides a tale of torment. From a fish’s perspective, the narrative is grotesque. Imagine entering a room to find your favorite dish, only to have a hook pierce through your mouth. You are dragged into an alien atmosphere, deprived of oxygen, flailing in agony, and then skinned alive—all in the name of human leisure.
The underlying reason for this normalized barbarity, as Akhtar points out, lies in the fish’s inability to scream. Without vocal cords, its pain is invisible, unregistered, and ultimately unimportant. This metaphor resonates hauntingly with the current state of Kashmiri society, a land bereft of its own vocal cords—its poetry, literature, cinema, and journalism.
In any society, the arts are the lifeblood, the vocal cords that transform collective pain into enduring expressions. Through poetry, novels, films, and journalistic integrity, the wounds of a people are stitched into narratives that demand to be heard. These expressions are not mere embellishments but are essential to a society’s resistance against erasure. They shout in the face of suppression and affirm humanity’s resilience. Yet in Kashmir, these vital arteries are being severed with chilling precision.
A Silenced Valley
Jammu and Kashmir’s once-vibrant cultural landscape is now marked by an eerie silence. For centuries, the Valley echoed with the poetry of Lal Ded and Habba Khatoon, the artful storytelling of the mystics, and the lilting songs that celebrated the land’s ethereal beauty. But today, this cultural symphony has dwindled into a whisper.
The Indian state’s systematic crackdown has choked the voices that could expose its transgressions. Poets who once wove verses about freedom and love now hesitate to put pen to paper. Cinematic representations, which could have captured the struggles of the occupied, remain conspicuously absent, stifled by fear or censored outright. Novels that could immortalize the Kashmiri struggle for dignity are scarce, and the ink of journalism, perhaps the most immediate voice of truth, is being forcibly dried.
Basharat Peer, in his memoir Curfewed Night, mournfully encapsulates this enforced silence: “The curfews silenced not only our movements but also our voices, our songs, and our stories.” His words illuminate how the systematic suppression of Kashmiri expression has turned the Valley into a graveyard of unspoken narratives. Journalists like Fahad Shah, who dared to document the atrocities in Kashmir, have faced imprisonment. Many others have been silenced forever, their questions and courage buried beneath the rubble of state suppression. In a region where even the act of speaking truth has become an act of rebellion, silence is fast becoming the new normal. But this imposed silence does not imply peace; it reflects the suffocation of an entire society.
The Importance of Vocal Cords
The arts and journalism are not luxuries; they are necessities. They give voice to the voiceless and render the invisible visible. A society without these expressions is like a fish gasping for air—its pain real but unacknowledged. Colonizers and oppressors understand this well. Their first move is to silence the poets, imprison the journalists, and dismantle the creative infrastructures that sustain a people’s identity. Without these “vocal cords,” the pain of a society becomes easier to dismiss, its struggles easier to deny.
Agha Shahid Ali, in his poem The Country Without a Post Office, mourns this loss of communication and community ties:
Each post office is boarded up
Who will deliver parchment cut in paisleys,
My news to prisons?
Only silence can now trace my letters to him
Or in a dead office the dark panes
When Akhtar’s fish struggles on the hook, its suffering is ignored because it cannot articulate its agony. Similarly, when Kashmiri society is strangled, the absence of its cultural expressions enables the world to look away. But this silence must not be mistaken for consent. Beneath this imposed quietude lies a reservoir of pain and resilience waiting for an outlet.
Reclaiming the Narrative
For Kashmir to reclaim its narrative, its vocal cords must be restored. Poets must once again write fearlessly, filmmakers must brave the lens, and writers must weave stories that echo in every corner of the world. Journalists must be protected, their voices amplified rather than silenced. The world, too, bears a responsibility. It must listen attentively to the whispers of Kashmir and amplify them into roars of solidarity.
As Saba Ghulam Nabi highlights, Kashmir’s poetic heritage has long been a source of inspiration and resistance. “Ghulam Ahmad Mahjoor, the national poet of Kashmir, whose poetry served as a source of inspiration and courage for Kashmiris to resist Dogra tyranny and support the separate nation movement. Kashmiri poetry, such as ‘Gulshan Watan Chuu Saney,’ ‘Sangar Maal,’ ‘Walu Haa Bagwano,’ and ‘Bagh Nishat k Gulu,’ express revolutionary ideas and the spirit of freedom. Similarly, Abdul Ahad Azad is known as the revolutionary poet of Kashmir, and the pioneer of classical poetry Mehmood Ghami and many other poets, including Rasul Mir, Shouraida Kashmiri, Amin Kamil, and Abdul Sattar Asi, used poetry to urge Muslims for patriotism and their socio-political rights.”
Shahnaz Bashir’s The Half Mother underscores the human cost of this silence. The story of a mother searching for her son, taken by security forces, reveals the haunting personal toll of oppression:
She wandered through the streets, calling his name, whispering his stories. But her words were swallowed by the winds, her cries muted by the guns
A society with silenced vocal cords risks losing its humanity, its identity, and its future. While poets like Mahjoor and Rasul Mir once immortalized Kashmir’s plight, no modern voices from Kashmir have emerged with the reach to present the region’s pain to the world. As the liberated part of the region, Azad Kashmir bears the responsibility to become the vocal cords of the Kashmiri struggle. It must produce its own Mahmoud Darwish or Pablo Neruda—voices that can translate the pain and resilience of Kashmiris into narratives so compelling that the world cannot ignore. Only then can the chorus of Kashmir rise again, louder and more resonant than ever before.
