"With a heavy heart it needs to be pointed out to the maestro that his performance was more akin to Nero fiddling as Rome burned. Of course, there is no way he could have known that, in the past quarter of a century, the Indian state has turned increasingly assertive against Kashmiri nationalism, dotting the Valley’s landscape with extensive acres of army camps, making the Indian Army the biggest real estate holder in the State. With over 70,000 people killed, over 10,000 people ‘disappeared’ and hundreds of thousands of Pandits displaced, it would be fatuous to imagine the imperious swish of a baton returning comfort to this region. If at all, it only contributed to two weeks of further needless discomfort for people living around Shalimar Gardens, with the security forces occupying their houses and rooftops and subjecting residents to severe search and cordon operations. " "Why, all the years of Zubin Mehta conducting the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra in Tel Aviv has not yet made a pacifist country out of Israel." "All these sentimentalists would need to learn that making music, as Edward Said pointed out, is a political act drenched in the ideology and hegemonic postures of the dominant powers of the State, to go against which merely invites repression."
Posted on: Wed, 18 Sep 2013 10:00:34 +0000
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