If Celebrities Were Kashmiris

Showing Indian celebrities with mutilated faces won't heal Kashmir

An open letter to Pakistani social activist, Mohammad Jibran Nasir.

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Dear sir,

I first heard of you after the tragic attacks on the school children in Peshawar, and I really appreciated you for your courage. I started to follow your videos on YouTube. I admire your courage. What you do takes a lot of grit. You showed it each time.

But then yesterday, you came up with, "What if you knew the victims?" It was all over your Facebook page and Twitter. The Pakistani media promoted it throughout the day. It became the news of the day.

As much as I respect you, sir, this is terribly wrong.

The campaign uses photos of Mark Zuckerberg and Indian celebrities such as Shah Rukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Alia Bhatt, Aishwarya Rai , Hrithik Roshan, Kajol, Virat Kohli and of course, Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

They are Photoshopped and shown with pellet gun injuries on their faces and either they have gone completely blind or lost an eye. The copy written is very moving and each time by someone or the other who has been a victim of violence in Kashmir.

The visuals are very hard-hitting and I see the way it is going viral, mostly in Pakistan. You got a lot of kudos.

But as much as I admire you, let me say you, you got it wrong.

Do you know what you did? You incited violence or terrorist attacks on these celebrities.

Of course, you will deny. But you send this message very strongly: "Look they are silent; they will only understand our pain when it happens to them."

Also read - What declaring Burhan Wani a 'terrorist' says about you

Rightly or wrongly, sir, is it not the logic behind every terrorist organisation's justification for the terror it spreads?

Doesn't it too use the same tactics to create terror? "Look they won't understand us; hit them, they will know what it feels to be like us."

Now you too have got that message out.

You have been sharing the way media has been making your campaign go viral.

One newspaper writes, "Now these celebrities will know the pain of Kashmiris." You shared it on your wall.

Sir, is that what you want? That they get hit and go blind?

I agree that blinding and hitting one's own citizens is gravely wrong. I, or any thinking Indian, will not support this.

But do you know, somewhere a young boy or a girl will see this and will have an idea that if we do something like this to someone, they will get what we feel.

Look what is happening throughout the globe, people are mowing each other down or wielding an axe to kill.

Find anything, a gun or a machete and get a head. That is what the world has come down to. But the bottom line is, "We are victims, they are wrong, get the heads."

Do you remember that picture of the little girl who was covered in white sheet with a doll by her side after the Nice attack happened? Why?

What had she done? Because someone got an idea that some people need to mowed down, because they are wrong. Pakistan itself has been a tragic victim of it. There are so many of those. The wronged ones.

Yesterday, when we spoke on your Facebook wall, about the post. I offered you my writing services. I asked you to do a similar campaign on the LGBT community of your country and use the faces of the mullahs or Raheel Sharif or may be even Fawad Khan.

May be a campaign on the Ahmadis being burnt alive or the Shias being killed. What about a campaign on the rape of Hindu girls and conversions? Can you use the faces of your celebrities and create an awareness campaign as you did with ours?

You gave me a vague answer. I said, I would do all the writings for free if you did it.

Will you do it, sir?

Of course, there were comments by your well-wishers, that I am self-promoting myself by asking a celebrity (I had no idea you were one, thought you were an activist) to do me a favour.

Anyway, here I am not important. Understand please, this is a way to tell you, that as much your intentions are good or noble, the execution was not.

You question our celebrities' silence. You have asked your followers to keep tagging them in their tweets. You want them to speak up about Kashmir.

Whether they speak or not, it is their prerogative.

But, I wonder sir, have you ever asked Fawad Khan to talk about the Taj Hotel, Mumbai Attacks? Will you create a similar campaign showing him in an injured state and ask him to talk about it, so that he too can feel the pain?

God forbid, someone gets incited and harms him. Have you thought about it? Can you create a campaign using your celebrities, mutilating them and ask them to talk and talk about Balochistan?

You said yesterday, that you took my point but you were driving this campaign because you had no territorial entry in Kashmir. I said, you could enter Lahore, Karachi or Islamabad, cities not ruled by the Indian government.

But will you arrange a queer parade there? You did not answer.

I respect you, Sir.

But no matter how much people are congratulating you on your campaign, the premise is wrong. Violence will beget violence.

You see that every day in your country. You could have done the same in some other way. You yourself know, that not one of our celebrities will perhaps reply back for all the tweets that have them tagged.

You surely got the eyeballs. But at the end of the day, it did more damage than good. Somewhere, someone is reading it and may be he/she might not reach these stars, but might end up harming someone else, so that at least someone feels the pain of the Kashmiris.

You got it wrong, sir. Very wrong.

Regards,

An ordinary Indian citizen.

PS: I know there will be a string of abuses to this post. But when someone abused me during our Facebook conversation, you stood up for me.

It takes guts to stand up for someone, who is actually standing against you. For that you have my respect.

But not for the campaign.