I’m almost sure it was Dickens who wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; the season of WhatsApped mourning and the season of twittered calls for vengeance; the spring of nationalist unity and the winter of silenced doubts.”
Or something to that effect, right?
Needless to say, in times of national mourning, when the collective conscience is wounded, we must mourn the meaningless loss of life around us. This is after all honest and authentic and normal, we mourn the attacks, we mourn the senseless loss of lives of tourists on holiday and on honeymoons. And, if we dare, perhaps we can also mourn the failures of vigilance, of empathy, of the systems meant to protect.
But grief, in such moments, is rarely left to its own devices. A glance around reveals that certain gestures are not just expected, they are demanded. Mourning, here, becomes not remembrance but a pledge, a public rite of loyalty, a ritual of allegiance.
And much like any ritual, there’s a certain etiquette.
For those good ones who have already agreed on what needs to be done, the etiquette to mourning involves hashtags that spell the word revenge in capital letters, flag-waving till the hands, unlike the minds, can no longer comply.
We, on the other hand, those still unwilling to howl for vengeance, are told that we must lower our voices, raise our flags, and wrap our sorrow in the colours of the nation.
Our righteous indignation demands our emotions not only be felt inside but also be weaponised outside. And the only azaadi that must be demanded in such times is azaadi from independent thought.
Rawalpindi should be flattened ! No more talks, no more trade, no more cricket , no more cultural activities. Time to teach Pakistan a lesson they don't forget. Jai Hind. #Pahalgam
— Dr. Shama Mohamed (@drshamamohd) April 22, 2025
A field guide on how to mourn right
Let me clarify with all the hysteria that this reformed sickular can muster: This essay is not meant for the afflicted few who are still cursed with that most subversive human impulse, the urge to ask. To ask, despite the thunderous drumbeat of televised certainty, despite the WhatsApp sermons in fire emojis, and despite the anchor-oracles mouthing state-sanctioned prophesies.
If you’re one of those souls compelled to scrutinise the state, fret over foreign entanglements, or mourn the slow implosion of the democratic soul; if, god forbid, you still spare a thought for minorities limping at the edges of public compassion – this text may not be for you. Return, if you will, to your underlined copy of Arundhati Roy, and let the good citizens carry on. The obedient ones. The ones who understand that in times of tragedy, complexity must be the first casualty.
Because these are not days for questions. Only slogans. Only salutes. Only sacrifice, preferably of someone else’s son.
And if, despite my generous warnings, you choose to read on, then prepare to host the parasite of discomfort. It is not a gentle guest.
Dangerous questions to banish
So, as a humble servant of public interest, allow me to provide a vital civic toolkit: a curated compendium of queries one must never ask, not to friends, not on social media, and certainly not in the soundproof vault of your private conscience, for even your inner monologue can soon be accused of being sedition-adjacent.
These questions are dangerous, disloyal and deeply inconvenient. If the terrorists entered India from across the border, what sort of lapse permitted them to march 400 km right under the noses of our omniscient security apparatus? Worse still, if they were domestic, then what has the great constitutional exorcism of Article 370 really achieved? Wasn’t it a promise of peace and prosperity? Or was it just for the prolonged performance of punitive control televised in HD?
Other questions: If someone did plan this, then to what end? Shouldn’t we scrutinise what happened for systematic flaws, bureaucratic hubris or government errors? If – as per the films I’ve watched in the last few years – the strongest and most nationalistic government that India has ever seen can’t guarantee us security, then why really do we think of them as strong? Is it just because they shout the loudest?
Asking these questions, one might think, is taking the tragedy with the seriousness it deserves. But asking these questions right now is rather mannerless. So, better just demand badlaa for now.
This moment calls for only two emotions: the meditative hush of sanctioned mourning, or the guttural scream for retaliatory annihilation. There is no middle ground. There is no moderating voice.
There must be no pause between the tragedy and the missile.
And if, by some tragic quirk of conscience, you still insist on clinging to sanity, then brace yourself. The questions you must exile are many, and multiplying.
Such as: Was this act perhaps not merely a symptom but a signal? A message etched in the language of fear, proclaiming that neither Kashmir nor the idea of India is safe, not for tourists, not for minorities, and not for the myth of unity we rehearse with such patriotic fervour.
Because as things stand, the attack seems to have further isolated the Valley and hardened the rest of India against it. What might follow? Another tightening of the noose? Further marginalisation of Indian Muslims in a nation already curdling into hostility?
In the new India, who does that really benefit?
But hush now. Don’t think, don’t ask, don’t breathe too loud. Just watch the flag flutter. Listen to the chants. And pray, not for peace but for permission to feel again without being called a traitor. In the republic of grief, doubt is treason, dissent and a discordant note in the funeral march.
The perils of introspection
And if you happen to be one of those unsalvageable souls who suspects that slogans like “ghar me ghus ke maarna” serve less as national defence strategies and more as theatrical ejaculations of fragile masculinity, then let me be the first to suggest a swift administrative solution.
Relinquish your citizenship. Go to Pakistan.
You see, there are questions and then there are dangerous questions, the latter being those that dare to scale the walls of our moral certainty, armed with inconvenient curiosity. Questions such as: If, indeed, it is Pakistan then who in that fractured polity of multiple power centres and competing chaos, do we target in the name of justice? A nation? A government? A people? Or simply some convenient abstraction, a silhouette painted green for national consumption?
And should the culpability rest, in whole or part, in the valleys of Kashmir, that metaphysical borderland between belonging and betrayal, then dare we ask: What does the average Kashmiri feel about the idea of India for this to occur?
Not what they’re told to feel, not what we assume they feel, but what pulses behind the curfews, the checkpoints, the suspended internet cables, and the hitherto televised peace?
Of course not. Such introspective inquiries are perilously self-reflective for our muscular patriotism to endure. They imply, quite outrageously, that patriotism may not be a monolith, that love for one’s country might also entail the audacity to question, to critique, to imagine it differently.
But this is not allowed.
Patriotism redefined
We must all, without exception, fall madly, blindly, performatively in love with a map. The kind printed on school notebooks, framed in government offices, paraded in parades, unquestioned and unquestionable. Geography, here, should not be a matter of cartographic precision but of ideological possession. The land must matter more than the lives upon it, the contoured sanctity of the nation much more than the security of its citizens.
And if, heaven forbid, you are one of those ungrateful anomalies who do not wax lyrical at the topographical poetry of partition lines, nor tear up at the motherland imagined as a goddess draped in saffron, then clearly, you are laughable. Ludicrous. A heretic at the temple of territory. If you believe patriotism resides not in bombast but in bonds, not in baying mobs or ballistic missiles but in people, disparate yet determined, holding hands across their differences for the common good – then why, dear traitor, are you even here? Shouldn’t you be reporting for duty with the Pakistani army?
What is patriotism, after all?
Is it that manufactured lump in the throat as a flag flaps dutifully against an apathetic sky, or is it the involuntary shudder that ripples through the body when you’re told, insistently and incessantly, what to feel and, more critically, what not to feel? Is it a solemn obligation to call your country back from the brink, or is it the gleeful compulsion to cheer it on as it stumbles, incinerates, incarcerates, and installs idols taller than justice?
Patriotism, in this moment, must be a creed that forgives its sins in advance, sanctifies suppression as strength, and baptizes bloodshed as inevitability.
The final truth
So, curb that cursed curiosity. Gag those godless doubts. For example, do not ask why, despite grand proclamations of peace and prosperity, the Valley forever suspended between surveillance and silence is still a stage for slaughter.
Do not wonder aloud why the same government that declared Kashmir safer than ever now whispers of unknown infiltrators and sudden sabotage.
And, for the love of Bharat Mata, do not ask that most treasonous of all questions: Cui bono? Who benefits from the spectacle of carnage? Could it be that outrage, meticulously choreographed, serves to further aggravate the already aggrieved, stupefy the electorate, and drown dissent in a sea of carefully manufactured consent? Because, that way lies madness. And FIRs. Best to lynch such questions before they even form into a coherent sentence in the crevices of your mind.
Surely, by now, you must sense the peril of probing too deeply. For questions sometimes dare to gesture, however faintly, toward a possibility too dreadful to voice: that the powers-that-be, in their divine infallibility, may not merely respond to chaos, but recast grief as their political capital. Once upon a time, home ministers resigned after such debacles. Today, indignation suffices, righteous, unflinching, and oddly untouchable.
But to even whisper that opportunism might follow tragedy is to flirt with heresy. It is to suggest that the sun could rise in the west, that gods might falter, and that a nation could wear its wounds not for healing, but as war paint for spectacle.
And that, dear reader, is not just unpatriotic it is unthinkable.
So, ask not what your country is doing in your name. Ask only how loudly you can chant her name back.
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