Shujaat: A voice of sanity silenced

Shujaat Bukhari is dead and I still cannot believe it. Death of a friend is always shocking. But when it is cold-blooded murder; when a young life is terminated; when a gentle, sane, rationale voice is silenced, the intensity of the trauma is compounded. It hits you like an electric shock. The initial disbelief is followed by a far more intense anger. The anger travels, far and wide and you know that you are not alone in mourning the loss. The injuries caused are social and the pain felt is collective, the losses are much bigger than any personal damage.

When friends came to know that I knew Shujaat, condolence messages started pouring in. Some of them knew him and some did not. Yet, the collective anger kept on building. The messages reflected all shades of anger. Let me copy and paste some of these messages here:

Really sad my condolences to you and all his loved ones

His killing is an act of cowardice.

bullets can't silence our voice

Gradually affairs in India and Kashmir are becoming frustrating

fascists are silencing the voice of people

I wept after watching the news in TV

A big blow on people for human rights, specifically in Kashmir

we lost a big brother in him

As the news broke out, outrage started pouring out. I clearly remember the morning that Narendra Dabholkar was assassinated, someone rang me up from NDTV and said they wanted me to come to the studio immediately. I reached there, dazed and numb. Little did I know then that the experience will repeat itself with increasing frequency and those who have withstood the onslaught on freedom of expression like solid rocks will fall one after the other. They will become the present day Bhagat Singhs and Rajgurus.

As soon as I received the news, I rang up a friend in Srinagar, who was quite close to Shujaat and has survived many attacks and death threats himself. While telling me the details of what had happened, still in deep shock, he kept on repeating, ‘Allah Ham Sab Par Rahem Kare, Aap Apna Khayal Rakhye Ga’ almost after every sentence. I was deeply touched. Here was a Kashmiri friend, another sane voice living under constant threat to his life, who had received news of brutal killing of his associate about an hour ago, and was worried about my safety. Was it an expression of personal concern or recognition of the fact that a culture of violence has gripped the entire country? Every one knows that Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, MM Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh have been killed by similar forces. The modus operandi of all these murders was not very different.

Shujaat always lived a precarious life. Living incessantly under the shadow of violence, he chose to vote for peace, freedom of expression, human rights and dignity of common citizens of Kashmir. Whenever any of these were violated, he wrote fearlessly and diligently. His last tweet, on the UN Human Rights’ report on Kashmir, is a proof of every thing that he lived and died for. Even before the official nationalist response was handed over to the press, Shujaat’s voice had boomed and echoed. Be it state or extremists, Shujaat was always critical of them and stood by those who were brutally crushed under the grinding wheels of violence. As an editor of a prominent newspaper in Kashmir and a regular contributor to national press, he became the loudest and clearest voice of Kashmiris.

This is not the first time that our collective conscience has been hit in a manner that leaves us numb, yet angry. It is also not the first time that we are forced to resolve once again that we will not let the voice of sanity die. Shujaat will rise from the grave, inspire the younger generations, and haunt those who want to spread the silence of the graveyard.

The writer is a leading poet and a scientist