In the summer of 2008, when my first born was not even ten months old, something happened which made me feel the helplessness a mother would always dread.
I had taken temporary transfer to Kashmir, when the state of Jammu and Kashmir was divided on communal lines like never before.
Some decisions taken by the government regarding the land and forest around the holy Amarnath Shrine did not go well with the local population, leading to the first of string of summer agitations that the Kashmir Valley had seen.
Many died, but what happened next was unprecedented. As communal politics took root on both sides, the divide resulted in a blockade.
The traders in the Jammu region decided to stop essential supplies.
The Kashmir Valley, which was connected to rest of the country through an arterial road passing through the mighty Peer Panjal, was shut out.
Even when the government tried to open then Jammu-Srinagar highway, the economic blockade stayed. As a young mother whose child had just begun to eat solid food, I felt helpless.
Baby food ran out of the markets soon. The valley’s supply of poultry was not enough to suffice demands. My son had just started having egg yolk and I found myself in a situation where I could not find eggs. Another thing he could have was bananas, but we do not grow them in Kashmir. Thankfully he was breast fed, but that was not enough.
My husband drove many kilometres from Srinagar to get some baby food and diapers after hearing that some were available in another district.
Unlike many others, we had the means to buy them. But our sense of helplessness was deep. It led me to one day call up a senior editor of a news channel, asking them as to why they are not speaking of the blockade in the strongest terms.
Destruction in the Gaza Strip. Photo: UNICEF/Hassan Islyeh
I fast forward to 2023 and Gaza and I realise how little I suffered. I imagine young mothers and new borns, with no water, food and electricity. I imagine they have a home one minute and they don’t have it the very next.
I imagine the mother has her child in her lap one minute and then the corpse in the next.
I also imagine the child is suckling at the mother’s breast one minute and hanging on to a dead body the next.
Many of us might want to close our eyes and not imagine the half burnt bodies of women, children and men there.
We have the liberty to even switch off the videos and swipe to the next happy Reel on Instagram.
But 2.2 million men, women and children living in the place which is now called the ‘world’s biggest prison’ do not have that liberty.
People are living those videos day in and day out, while we are reposting about this on social media and at the same time feeling frustrated at how the world is not united in stopping this carnage, this genocide.
What Hamas did on October 7 killing thousands of Israelis is an act that needs to be condemned with the strongest of words. My heart goes out to all the innocents killed during those attacks and my prayers are with the families who must still be struggling to come in terms with their loss.
Most of us who believe in humanity would want a world with zero deaths and killings in any name, be it of region or religion or anything else.
But I, as a mother, want to appeal to every mother out there to raise her voice that the innocents in Palestine not be equated with Hamas.
There are millions who have nothing to do with the killings of October 7.
How can the world uphold and make a noise about human rights of a certain section of population and not others?
When someone from a majority white country, infamously during the beginning of Russia-Ukraine war condemned the attack on Ukrainians saying “they look like us”, I thought the statement was vain.
Today, however, I feel that statement spoke of a kind of truth as the human rights of a population which is considered inferior matters very little.
But history will not be kind to us if we continue with this line of thought. Tomorrow’s generation will ask us what were we doing when millions of people were being wiped from the face of this earth. What was the world doing when a nation of innocents was fighting to just be…
Toufiq Rashid is a journalist who has covered the Kashmir conflict, health and wellbeing for top Indian newspapers for nearly two decades. She now works at @Pixstory.
