Comedy of Commemoration

A reoccurring theme of Milan Kundera, the Czech French essayist, is how ritualistic commemoration of historical events, especially those with ideological and political weight, can become a comic affair with changes in the political regime. Oftentimes the result is a kind of ironic or even farcical distortion of the original event. Exactly, as the Martyr’s Day restrictions, as well as commemoration at Srinagar on the 12^th, 13^th and 14^th of July 2025 was. A fact more farcical than fiction.

Did the way in which the National Conference was pushed to commemorate the historical day, demean its own status and stature as the numero uno political party? More importantly, did it compromise the sanctity of the solemn occasion? For that matter, did the opposition parties do the same too?

Scaling a wall in heroic bravado or showering petals in splendid isolation is an affront to the underlying sentiment of commemorating the 13th of July. By doing what they did, an act of collective commemoration was converted into covert, individual acts of defiance against an administrative diktat. This is not what 13^th July is important for.

This individual appropriation of collective commemoration distorts both the integrity and solemnity of the shared historical event. Collective remembrance, such as the Martyr’s Day rituals, is meant to honour shared history and aims to unify the society’s understanding of the past, fostering a sense of shared identity and meaning. However, when individuals project their personal agendas onto these events, the collective experience gets fragmented, diluted, or manipulated, undermining its intended purpose.

The self-glorification severely compromised the sanctity of a serious affair. The headlines next day were about the heroics of the commemorators and not the commemorated. It is immoral to make graves the milestones. Was all of it mere optics, and one-upmanship that too only for the social media? Was a solemn symbolic event with historical significance and political substance converted into cheap political theatrics?

Once the collective memory is compromised, and diluted, it is eventually bound to get distorted for the sake of a singular, often politically motivated, narrative. It doesn’t stop there. This contributes to a form of historical amnesia that undermines the very purpose of remembering. In the process, it becomes a sentimental matter that appeals to emotions rather than critical thought. This reduction of history focussing on a family, a clan or an individual is a form of kitsch as it sidesteps the challenging and uncomfortable truths of collective experience in favour of an idealized and often false image.

The way the remembrance was conducted by the political leadership it prioritized emotional excess over authenticity. In a collective commemoration, the display of their exaggerated emotional connection to the Martyrs’ Day was to gain social approval and moral superiority. The fact is that every side manipulated the historical meta narratives for political purposes; each in their own way.

It is not as if 13^th July has never been used for political purposes. Of course, it has. Always. What started off as memorialising “death symbolized as sacrifice” for freedom from monarchy, gathered different hues of meanings and values along the way. Indeed, it served different purposes for different regimes with diverse ideologies. Just as, the negation of 13th July is serving the current regime an ideological purpose.

The fact is that while the specific commemoration is for the 22 dead, the symbolism of remembrance goes far beyond that; it was for the first time Kashmiri Muslims, openly challenged the Dogra regime; monarchy and the feudal system. Indeed, the emblematic importance of this day is in it being the trigger for democratisation of Kashmir. The political demands presented to the Maharaja by the people on October 19, 1931, sought “establishment of a democratic form of Government in J&K with the establishment of a legislature in the state”. This made the martyrs day a site of contestation with Jammu. It was a battle between the monarch and his ruling elite and the tormented and oppressed subjects.

The Kashmiri Pandits, too, carry their own memory, naming 13th July a “Black Day,”. They quickly positioned themselves as the “beleaguered minority” of “enlightened, educated and law-abiding subject’s facing violence from the “barbarous and ignorant” local Muslims.

With the decisive shift in the balance of power towards Jammu, the accepted narrative is being reversed. The narrative of victimhood is now clashing with and dominating the Muslim narrative of martyrdom. As such, it is not the withdrawal of government’s patronage to July 13th per se that is tragic. It is for sure unwarranted since even as the government commemoration of 13th July did historicize the past of Kashmir, it in no way negated or contradicted the larger political association with India. If anything, post the accession with India, July 13th was made to play a role in nation building by the National Conference.

If anything, the anti-feudal movement in Kashmir was running parallel to the anti-colonial national freedom struggle. Indeed, in mainstream histories former was almost seen as a subset of the latter as the Congress Party provided ideological, moral and logistic support to the anti-monarchy struggle.

The restrictions need to be seen as challenges to such events and meta-narratives around them face from competing perspectives that reshape their meaning. The fact that 13th of July has so much of a salience with the people of Kashmir meant that it has been at the centre of many an appropriation battle. In this collision of memories, lies the eternal struggle: the impossibility of a single truth in a Valley fractured by history.

What indeed is tragic that the Valley centric political parties and their leadership of today has done precious little to enhance the memorialisation of this event. Societies build a collective meta-narrative by making it relevant for the current times. It has never even been a part of the prescribed history texts that are taught in the schools and colleges. While it is undoubtedly lived history, and not learned history.

Should the man who is said to have steadied the blood-soaked shirt of a martyr which was being carried by the protestors as a flag have been buried in the same graveyard? For, the legend and the lore are that the dying freedom fighter is said to have told a young Mohammed Abdullah, “We have done our bit, now it is for you to take it to culmination”.

In the silence of a locked graveyard, in the defiance of a whispered prayer, the martyrs live on, their deaths a question that Kashmir asks itself each year: what is the weight of a memory that refuses to be forgotten? Unbearable. Quintessential Kundera!

The author is Contributing Editor Greater Kashmir