Sheikh Salman Amin
Raghib Tahseen’s nazm is not a protest fragment; it is a complete moral architecture. It moves from the ruler to the court, from the court to the sword, from the sword to the public square, and finally to the vulnerable standing under pressure. Read in Kashmir, this movement feels less like metaphor and more like recognition.
The poem begins with a direct moral indictment:
“Aye hakim-e-waqt! Tere kirdar pe thoo,
Teri guftar pe laanat, tere darbar pe thoo.”
This opening is severe because it judges power by character before title. That is its first and perhaps its deepest refusal: it will not be dazzled by office, ceremony, or rank. It asks what authority has done to deserve reverence. In Kashmir, that question has become unavoidable. The public has heard too many promises, too many polished speeches, and too many assurances that arrived late or not at all. The force of the opening lies in its moral clarity: power is not sacred if it humiliates the people it claims to serve.
The poem then turns to the court, and the image of borrowed shine becomes a severe political critique:
“Jis ke pallu se chamakte hon shehanshahon ke boot,
Aise darbar se bakhshi hui dastar pe thoo.”
A court whose brightness comes from the boots of emperors is not a place of honor; it is a place of dependency. That line resonates strongly in Kashmir, where politics has often been shaped by loyalty networks, backdoor entries, and party workers cultivated for vote-bank engineering rather than public responsibility. Such a system does not create service; it creates dependence. It teaches people to follow, not to lead, and to perform loyalty rather than practice accountability.
Over time, that kind of politics leaves a mark on public memory. Kashmiris have learned caution not because they are detached, but because they have been repeatedly disappointed. “Jab zakhm barson tak diye jayen, to ehtiyaat bhi fitrat ban jati hai.” This line captures a social truth: repeated injury produces a defensive instinct. It is not cynicism; it is experience. It is what remains when trust has been used too often as a political resource. Many politicians have studied Kashmiri minds with painful precision; they know where the wounds are, how hope rises, and how quickly it can be used. But repeated exploitation also changes the people. It creates resilience, suspicion, and a language of self-protection.
The sword in the poem is no longer a symbol of protection; it becomes a weapon turned inward:
“Jo faqat apne hi logon ka gala kaatti ho,
Aisi talwar, ma’a sahib-e-talwar pe thoo.”
In Kashmir, this image speaks directly to the long delays, paper leaks, and scrapped posts that have marked recruitment for years. Young people prepare, wait, and hope, only to find that their future can be postponed by a system that appears unable or unwilling to protect merit. Recruitment, which should be a ladder of dignity, often becomes a lesson in humiliation. The poem names that betrayal with striking economy.
And the humiliation does not stop at the borders of administration. Kashmiri shawl sellers who travel outside the Valley to earn a livelihood have faced harassment, insult, and physical assault. Kashmiri students studying in other states have also reported hostility and identity-based pressure. These are not isolated events; they belong to the same atmosphere the poem condemns. Once a people are made vulnerable in public life, that vulnerability travels with them. The trader on the road and the student in the hostel are both carrying the weight of the same political climate.
The couplet about the city of ruin and the domesticated artist is one of the poem’s sharpest attacks on the people who beautify decay:
“Shahar-e-aashob zada, is pe qasida goi,
Gumbad-e-dehr ke is paaltu fankar pe thoo.”
The poet is not only angry at ruin; he is angry at the voice that decorates ruin and makes it respectable. Kashmir has seen enough of this habit. Broken systems are described as stability. Delay is renamed strategy. Public frustration is softened with polished statements and ritual empathy. Even the repeated promise to abolish VVIP culture belongs to this pattern. Before elections, the language of equality is loud; after elections, the sirens return, the convoys return, and the distance between power and ordinary life returns with them.
This is also where the role of opposition must be read honestly. In a democracy, opposition should limit power, question misuse, and keep authority answerable. But in Kashmir, opposition is often reduced to selective memory. Parties that once benefited from patronage and decay now speak as if history can be erased by changing the chair. The poem refuses that convenience. It knows that public memory outlives political slogans. It knows that a system cannot be condemned only when it is out of power and forgiven when it is inside power.
The final line of the nazm captures the oldest pattern of political life:
“Zor ke samne kamzor, to kamzor pe zor…”
It describes strength descending on the weak while bowing before the powerful. Kashmir knows this pattern across institutions, offices, and everyday encounters. Youth are questioned, workers are neglected, students are exposed, and families are made to bear the cost of every institutional failure. Public safety begins to feel less like a right than a negotiation. When the state asks for reports and letters while the wound is still fresh, it confirms the poem’s deeper accusation: the weak are expected to wait; the system is expected to survive.
The lesson of Jantar Mantar belongs here as part of the same democratic grammar. That protest showed that public conscience, when organized, can become real political pressure. It forced accountability at a central level and proved that civic action is not merely symbolic. It can produce consequence. Kashmir’s leadership should take that seriously. If public pressure can reach the centre, it can also demand responsibility from state-level power when it repeatedly fails on recruitment, safety, dignity, and governance.
That is why Raghib Tahseen’s nazm remains so urgent. It does what political language often avoids: it names the court, the sword, the humiliation, and the betrayal without hiding behind polish. It gives shape to the grammar of a failed order. And in Kashmir, where that grammar has repeated itself for so long, the poem feels less like literature than recognition.
The poem is anger, yes — but more than anger, it is a witness. It does not ask to be admired. It asks to be understood.
(The author is a Kashmir-based nursing graduate and student activist writing on public policy and youth issues. He can be reached at [email protected])
