Postcards For Kashmir

Bhargava, social activist from Kurnool, Andhra, writes:

Dear Friends,

We, your brothers and sisters from India are extremely concerned about your well being. We can only imagine the oppressive silence that surrounded you. Though we are separated by a gulf of sorrow and silence, we want you to know that we are all thinking about you. We keep talking about you. We hope you get freedom back. Freedom to smile, freedom to meet friends, freedom to roam around your own town, freedom to play and laugh.

We wish you a Sunny morning.

(Those who want to participate in this campaign of writing Postcards for Kashmir please send a photo of your Postcard to this Page. We have collected a database of addresses of public spaces in Kashmir - government offices, educational institutions, places of worship - to write letters to. It is a campaign to spread awareness about Kashmir and develop a counter-narrative to the one actively propelled by State's propaganda machinery.)

Ananthu, a journalist from Hyderabad writes :

"Dear far kashmir

I know,
You can't take a walk in your familiar hillside lanes
You can't talk to the loved ones nor to a stranger traveller in exploration of your beauty-valley

You can't take a call nor make one to the nearest or farther
You are silenced,
Fenced,
Tensed!
I know you are stand still!

In these two black months in this land's law,
We stand by you!

"Agar Firdaws ba roy-i zamin ast,
hamin ast-u
hamin ast-u
hamin ast."

For jammuriath
Kashmiriath
Insaaniyat!

(Quote used inside is a nazm by jahanghir, Mughal emperor on kasmir)

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(Those who want to participate in this campaign of writing Postcards for Kashmir please send a photo of your Postcard to this Page. We have collected a database of addresses of public spaces in Kashmir - government offices, educational institutions, places of worship - to write letters to. It is a campaign to spread awareness about Kashmir and develop a counter-narrative to the one actively propelled by State's propaganda machinery.)

To the teachers & students of St Joseph's Higher Secondary School

In solidarity as they enter their third month of a shut down/lock down.

In admiration for their fortitude and their courage.

From a Kashmiri, but posted far away from Kashmir!

Sanjay Kak, 13/10/19

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(Those who want to participate in this campaign of writing Postcards for Kashmir please send a photo of your Postcard to this Page. We have collected a database of addresses of public spaces in Kashmir - government offices, educational institutions, places of worship - to write letters to. It is a campaign to spread awareness about Kashmir and develop a counter-narrative to the one actively propelled by State's propaganda machinery.)

"Sarthi recounted how the postcard-writing demonstration was followed by an argument with KK Singh, the university’s acting registrar, during which the students questioned why the administration allotted the university hall and classrooms for the RSS to organise their events. According to Sarthi, Singh questioned the students’ academic capabilities in response. “The students who are leading the protests are PhD scholars or are pursuing fellowships,” Sarthi told me. “None of them are weak in studies. This is our external activity. We are talking about Bahujan society.”

Expelled Wardha college students accuse university of targeting Bahujans, dissenters The university students were expelled for a demonstration against Modi held on Kanshi Ram's death anniversary. They said the VC was saffronising the campus.

Dear Sadiya,

We hope this postcard has reached you now.

This country has been unkind to you. We are ashamed of that.

But we also know that you've been fighting hard with a strength that comes from a desire to rightfully live in freedom.

We wish you carry this fire with more strength.

All love and more
From us, University of Hyderabad

____

(Those who want to participate in this campaign of writing Postcards for Kashmir please send a photo of your Postcard to this Page. We have collected a database of addresses of public spaces in Kashmir - government offices, educational institutions, places of worship - to write letters to. It is a campaign to spread awareness about Kashmir and develop a counter-narrative to the one actively propelled by State's propaganda machinery.)

M.R.L, student of pharmacy from Anantapur, writes

"The independent India that was built with the ideals of democracy has been stripping off the Kashmiris of their fundamental rights, freedom and liberty in the name of 'development' for over 58 days. As a student in India, with true democratic spirit, I condemn this unjust military occupation of those in power. I condemn the barbarism of media, institutions and the people backing this. I extend my solidarity to the people of Kashmir and their fight for freedom, liberty and their rights."

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(Those who want to participate in this campaign of writing Postcards for Kashmir please send a photo of your Postcard to this Page. We have collected a database of addresses of public spaces in Kashmir - government offices, educational institutions, places of worship - to write letters to. It is a campaign to spread awareness about Kashmir and develop a counter-narrative to the one actively propelled by State's propaganda machinery.)

Education Paralysis in Kashmir: Need to protect the future | ORF Innovative and creative educational initiatives and their effective use can break the legacy of violence and mistrust in Kashmir.

https://sabrangindia.in/article/respected-mr-prime-minister-post-card-appeals-st-stephens-college-students-kashmir

"Respected Mr. Prime Minister," : Post Card-Appeals from St. Stephen's College Students on the Kashmir Communication Ban After more than 50 days of communication clamp down and continued curfew in the Kashmir valley, some students at St. Stephen's College have started writing to the Prime Minister about their concerns on the condition of people in the Kashmir valley. The material they are using is post card: those yel...

"Beloved Fatima,

Hope you remember me, that day we played while everyone else was shopping, together we watched the pigeons flying through that big window.

Are you going out and playing now, all the doors and windows are closed isn't it?

You can't go to school also; you always are excited to go despite of the cold mornings...

That time it was very cold and full of snow in Gulmarg; I regret about not taking you there. The more you go up, the sky and earth are merging together, you hardly see any boundary between and you will feel like flying.
How beautiful will be everything if there are no boundaries and wars...

I wish you get this postcard and make you smile when someone is reading it for you.

Love
Fabi"

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(Those who want to participate in this campaign of writing Postcards for Kashmir please send a photo of your Postcard to this Page. We have collected a database of addresses of public spaces in Kashmir - government offices, educational institutions, places of worship - to write letters to. It is a campaign to spread awareness about Kashmir and develop a counter-narrative to the one actively propelled by State's propaganda machinery.)

P, Professor at Government Arts College, Anantapur writes to Model Public High School (Sopore-Bundipora road) in Kashmir -

"I stand with Kashmiris!

Kashmiris are living in the most militarised region on the earth now. I am trying to understand the situation in Kashmir after revocation of 370 Article. Hundreds of elected politicians and social activists have been imprisoned or kept under house arrest. Huge number of young men including minors have been arrested in night raids and transported to jails outside the state. Every woman has a pathetic story of waiting for her teenage sons. Students haven't been able to attend schools.

I stand with Kashmir and I raise my voice for Kashmiris. I hope the people of Kashmir will lead a peaceful life soon and the things will be as usual in near future. I also wish the students will attend the school without any fear."

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(Those who want to participate in this campaign of writing Postcards for Kashmir please send a photo of your Postcard to this Page. We have collected a database of addresses of public spaces in Kashmir - government offices, educational institutions, places of worship - to write letters to. It is a campaign to spread awareness about Kashmir and develop a counter-narrative to the one actively propelled by State's propaganda machinery.)

SN, from Anantapur, an ex government school teacher and poet writes:

"They say that for more than 70 years Article 370 has been detrimental to the people of Kashmir and they did this only to protect them. This propaganda is absolutely false. It's really an International strategy to turn Kashmir into a corporate Kashmir. All Indians should understand this basic logic."

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(Those who want to participate in this campaign of writing Postcards for Kashmir please send a photo of your Postcard to this Page. We have collected a database of addresses of public spaces in Kashmir - government offices, educational institutions, places of worship - to write letters to. It is a campaign to spread awareness about Kashmir and develop a counter-narrative to the one actively propelled by State's propaganda machinery.)

RS, from Delhi, a student. Writes her Postcard

"Dear Saliha,

I cannot ask how you are. Last time we spoke, we talked of prisons and interacting with prisoners, and I shudder at the grim irony of it all. Many of us are experiencing a different sense of fear and confinement. We see our collective conscience shrinking into unrecognisable dark shapes. Our outrage and grief fall on deaf, unmoved ears. Above all, we fear that we may become inure to this great injustice, like we have, in all the tragedies, in all the decades before this. Our lives don't stop on your account.

I have been reading Paash of late and the poem on the reverse reads, 'The most dangerous of all, is the death of our dreams'. It is the kind of death that I pray you are spared, even as I see many around me succumb to it.

You are in all my thoughts,
All my love.

24/09/2019"
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(Those who want to participate in this campaign of writing Postcards for Kashmir please send a photo of your Postcard to this Page. We have collected a database of addresses of public spaces in Kashmir - government offices, educational institutions, places of worship - to write letters to. It is a campaign to spread awareness about Kashmir and develop a counter-narrative to the one actively propelled by State's propaganda machinery.)

"Mulla Muhammad Tahir Ghani, known as Ghani Kashmiri, is one of the foremost Persian language poets in the subcontinent and possibly the most popular Persian poet of Kashmir. While his biographical details are obscure, he likely lived in the first decade of the 17th century in the old city of Srinagar."

Source:
http://daak.co.in/masnavi-sh*taiyah-ghani-kashmiris-detailing-frozen-kashmir/

Postcards4Kashmir

Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali's 'The Country Without A Post-Office' begins with an epigraph that cries like dead letters sent "To dearest him that lives alas! away". Shahid's poem is a witness account of loss and grief and an invocation to the mad heart: Be brave.

Anyone who had been trying to communicate with their dear and near ones in Kashmir for the past several weeks and found themselves against a wall – undelivered letters, messages or calls that could not be connected – would understand what 'dead letters' stand for.

'Postcards4Kashmir' is a project to reach out to the people of Kashmir with handwritten letters to express our love and solidarity in the true spirit of democracy. It is also mark of protest against the continuation of psychological siege on a community as a whole, which evidence increasingly shows has a human cost. We urge everyone with a conscience to be a part of the project – to borrow a phrase from Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish – and resist the invitation to dance on their graves.

'Postcards4Kashmir' draws its moral energy from the poems of Shahid and the numerous voices from the valley and across India that spoke for democracy and right to dissent but have been silenced. Anyone who feels that the continuing communication blockade in Kashmir is inhumane and needs to be stopped forthwith can become a participant by sending postcards or letters to addresses in Kashmir.

You can be a part of the initiative even if you don't have a friend or a dear one in Kashmir. We also intend to make available a database of publicly available addresses in the region – government offices, educational institutions, places of worship – to help you reach out to the people and help them hold onto their faith.

Please remember to use the hashtag while posting the photographs of letters sent by you on social media. This would help us document the project and ensure that it reaches a wider audience.