Ashutosh Thapliyal
What is the relevance of media? This is one of the misunderstood subject by nations and its people. The image of “Toast of the US President with the Shah of Iran”, changed the complete landscape of Iran and its people. But I wonder why till date the “Image of Terrorism”, has not been understood by the minds of ordinary people? Why till date no one ever stood up and said “No” to the violence? Is it our failure or failure of the Image?
In a democratic world, media is considered to be the fourth pillar of the nation. It has not only social but moral obligation towards society. The nation thrives, if the tool of media is committed towards collective good and aimed at “Betterment of the Society”.
But due to our vested interest, sometimes we fail to understand the power of image. The glorification of militants by calling them as “Liberators” or “Shaheed”, is wrong projection and encouraging young boys to become fodder of this non-stop commercialisation of terrorism.
The Persians named “Hindustan” after river “Sindhu” as “S” is pronounced as “H” in
Persian language. But distorted history by those who never studied it or even understood,
today give sermons on history. The sad part is that we never realise that these vicious propaganda would only lead to further deterioration. Why do we talk only till 1947, whereas
we all are well aware that our history dates back to those times, when the so called western world was not even discovered? The division of this great civilisation by colonial regime is not adequate to understand one simple thing that it is the commoner who suffers the brunt of this façade.
Since ages, the revered scholars and philosophers have also referred this land as “Heaven”. The pristine purity and sanctity of this valley had always fascinated the Saints and Sufis, whereas the terrorist are now being fascinated by this valley. This much distortion is not adequate to understand that violence only breeds violence and as a society, I pity that what we have done to this valley. Are we so bankrupt in terms of our intellect and social values, that our thousand years of social belief were destroyed in few years? The temples, Dargahs, Shrines of Kashmir were even visited and worshipped by “Mughal Sultanate” but today even a single devotee is not present to worship his deity. Does it even hurt anyone? I wonder the heterogeneous society of Kashmir would not be transformed to be homogenous society and all these issues would not become part of forgotten history.
The monoculture in nature also leads to stagnation and unhealthy environment, therefore an attempt to create monolithic society would only lead to disaster in this valley. The image of “Kashmiriyat” in its purest form is the need of the hour. The future generations should feel proud of their culture and heritage. Therefore the real image of Kashmir needs to be projected which showcase the heterogeneous culture with mystic Sufism in air and everlasting purity in thoughts and co-existence.
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