Kashmiri cartoonist's ordeal in Delhi

Back home, I feel reborn
Greater Kashmir Sept 28

The GK Cartoonist Malik Sajad Narrates The Experience Of Being A Kashmiri At A Wrong Time In New Delhi.

I arrived home from Delhi yesterday. I took a deep breath when I laid eyes on the landscapes of the valley. My mother was waiting for me at home. Her face was pale and her eyes were full of tears. My father held me for a long time as if I were away for years. My brothers gathered around me as if my return was unexpected. My mother asked me in a weak voice, “Were you okay in Delhi?” “Yes,” I nodded, “My exhibition had a huge response. Everyone praised my cartoons and I enjoyed the trip.”
They looked worried and I sought the reason for their worry.” They replied, “Sajad, some policemen in civilian clothes came here to verify some information about you while you were in Delhi. You didn’t call us for four days. We thought something bad has happened to you. We were all crying.” I was surprised. My family already knew what I had tried to keep secret for the sake of my mother’s health. At home I felt safe again, and I narrate to them the ordeal I went through in New Delhi for being a Kashmiri.
I was invited by the Public Service Broadcasting Trust to create an installation art in the OPEN FRAMES, EXPLORING CONFLICT, an international film festival about peace and conflict held at the India Habitat Centre. The festival began on the 12 September and lasted eight days. My installation titled “Terrorism of Peace” featured my cartoons hanging from rolls of razor wire with some alcohol bottles hanging on the wire, exactly the same way as found around bunkers of troopers on the streets of Srinagar. I put some mud and stones on the shiny green marble floor of the Stein Auditorium to give the installation the real feel of Kashmir.
On Saturday afternoon, the second day of the festival, I drew a cartoon in my hotel room for my Sunday Slice column. I took a picture of it with my digital camera and headed to a cybercafé about 150 meters from the habitat centre to mail it to Greater Kashmir. After I mailed the cartoon I visited the Greater Kashmir website and my cartoon website. Meanwhile, I heard another browser seated on a nearby computer chatting over the phone about the serial blasts at Connaught Place and Greater Kailash I. Soon everyone in the café joined in on a discussion about terrorism and the blasts. While I was watching news videos on Greater Kashmir’s website, the owner of the café peered over my shoulders to glimpse what I was looking at. Soon the owner and others started to talk about me in hushed voices. “He is Kashmiri! We should check his identity!” they whispered. The owner approached me and asked me for my passport in a soft voice. I gave him my identity card and told him that I don’t have my passport with me. He took it and xeroxed it. He studied my identity card for a long time. He asked me where I was staying in Delhi and I gave him the address of the Habitat Centre. He asked me which websites I had visited. I listed them for him. I could hear the customers saying “He is looking at websites from Kashmir!” Then someone said loudly “Why should we take responsibility for this boy. He could be anything! Just call the police and let them verify who he is!” I started to panic. “I am Kashmiri,” I thought “No one will listen to me.”
There was a PCO in the café. They called the police and told them that there is a Kashmiri in the café and that they should verify my identity. I asked the café owner to call the habitat centre to check my identity as

well. They refused. I pleaded with them to just call the centre, but they wouldn’t. Two fat police constables and a woman inspector wearing two stars arrived within five minutes, wearing a we-have-got-the-culprit look. Her face frightened me. Her hair was jet black and short like a boy’s hair cut. Her eyes were stiff like black moles on her face. She held a very fine stick in her hand. She entered the café shouting “Who is the guy? Who is the guy?” Before anyone pointed at me I raised my hand with my I card, shouting back, “Madam it is me, it is me! Here is my I card!”
She didn’t look at the card, but slid it into her pocket, and ordered a constable to search into my bag. They studied my camera as if it were a bomb. They told me to pack everything in the backpack. I quickly managed to eject the memory card out of my camera and slip it in my pocket, since my photographs were the only proof of my installation at the habitat centre. Before they confiscate my mobile I memorized the number of the director of the film festival. The inspector shouted at me “Salay bahar chalo!” I shook with fear. I didn’t know what to do. No one would listen to me. The constables literally dragged me out of the cafe. Someone shouted “We should place him in the bus.” I was shocked and cried, “Please listen to me! Please listen to me!” Almost two hundred people gathered on the road to see the “terrorist”--Me! The crowd was so big that it created a traffic jam. I shouted in the air “Somebody please go to the habitat centre and tell them the artist whose installation is there has been arrested!”
As they were dragging me to the police station, the inspector shouted at me “You Kashmiri bastard! Why do you people have problem with being part of India? Sala…!” At the police station, they seated me on a bench with another person they had arrested. He had dried brown blood all over his face. His eyes were sharp and red. It was obvious he was drunk. I pleaded, “Please listen to me. I am a cartoonist in Kashmir! I am not a terrorist! I am innocent!” They ignored me and listened to their wireless radios. They continued to hurl abuses at me. Another woman inspector wearing civilian clothes with a wireless radio in her hand shouted at me “You bastard, you speak such nice Hindi! Why do you have a problem with being part of India!” I replied, trying to be as transparent as possible, “Madam, I am speaking Urdu actually, which sounds like Hindi.”
The inspector woman who dragged me to police station began to record the evidence:
1: He was looking at the website with diagrams of guns on it. (This was her definition for my cartoon website kashmirblackandwhite.com!)
2: He was searching for information about the Kashmir conflict. (I was reading some articles to prepare for my talk about the “Dialoguing peace in Kashmir” at the Stein Auditorium on 17 September.)
3: He had a camera with a memory card in it. (Obviously my camera is a Canon digital SLR and it can’t be without a memory card.)
I was crying. I couldn’t feel my fingers and feet. I felt like I had been electrocuted. The incandescent lights in the police station were shining brightly, but it seemed to me very dark.
I had no hope now. I thought of running away from the police station. “The habitat centre is only 50 meters away,” I thought. “Even if they shoot me I would be injured, but I can prove my innocence.”
But I didn’t want to give them any chance. I thought my life was over. “If there is no hope of life, I need to accept the reality,” I said to myself. But somehow this thought actually gave me strength. “I am not going to be scared of them any more,” I thought “They are not going to listen to me any way.” I stood up and said to them sternly, “Come kill me! Shoot me! Do whatever you want, but keep in mind that I am a guest here and my work is being displayed in the Stein Auditorium! Hang me or label me a terrorist! I am going to sit here silently now!” Then they finally called the Coordinator for PSBT. The number was busy. I asked her “Madam, can’t you come with me to the Habitat Centre to check whether I am speaking truth or not? It is only 50 meters away.” Finally, after fifteen minutes, she relented and agreed to take me to the Habitat Centre. They held me by the collar as we walked to the centre. Once we entered the gate no 3 of habitat center, she continued to curse Kashmiris. At this point however, I was in the habitat centre, so I shot back, “Mind your language!” My voice was firm and she became quiet. When she saw my work in the auditorium, she started shouting “You Kashmiris have a problem!” I wasn’t in their grasp anymore, so I picked up a stone lying in the mud of my installation and started to smash my installation. The sound of the glass frames breaking echoed throughout the auditorium. Those watching a film inside the auditorium came outside to see what had happened. The policewoman ran away.
I called GK to inform them what had happened, but the Habitat Centre manger instructed me to not leave the premises and not to call from my phone, or email, for a few days. After three days I called home and the GK office. The PBST issued a letter to the security agencies that I am their guest and they are responsible for my accommodation and tickets. I thank God that I was a guest of the habitat centre and not alone as a cartoonist for GK. Otherwise, the story of another missing Kashmiri would have been all over the news here. I watched the news channel that night to see if they would flash my name….