On the days when the entire Indian sub-continent is celebrating its Independence from the British, Kashmiris are mourning their dependence on both India as well as Pakistan even for their very basic survival! For them August 15 is the “Dependence Day”, a reminder that even after sixty years they still remain totally dependent and helpless. This day amply demonstrates how Kashmiris have been reduced to poor wretches at the mercy of soldiers and security personnel. The situation has come to such a pass that some people feel before 1947 the Kashmiris seemed to have been better off under the autocratic rule of the Maharaja. Quite a few senior people often lament and nostalgically compare the present turbulent life to the peaceful times they have spent under the Dogra Rule. They say during those times laws and rules were observed but at present there are no laws or rules and as such the question of observance does not arise. The story of Kashmir for last sixty years is pathetic. A continually bleeding tragedy! The descriptions of travel recounted by various explorers during the early part of the last century describe Kashmir as a real paradise. The environment was clean. There were lush green dense forests every where. Even these extended right up to the city which had a small population then. It has been mentioned in various accounts that wild animals such as Hangul, foxes, and jackals descended into the city periphery especially during winter. Sometimes wild geese, pheasants, and migratory birds would fall into the lawns of city dwellers during heavy snowfalls. The city would receive more than five to six feet of snow. The water bodies with their network of canals and the river were clean and fully navigable. The valley was more or less self sufficient in food. There were no imports of mutton, milk, and vegetables. The pastures and meadows would yield enough mutton, and milk for the local population. Above all else, the things were cheap. All these facts of life in not a very distant past seem like a fairy tale in the present day Kashmir. No doubt it is also a fact that during the Dogra period the Kashmiri peasants led a wretched life. They were like serfs. They did not own any land. They tilled the land like the beasts of burden and still would not get enough to eat. The years of oppression had driven out all sense of decency, self-respect, and dignity out of them. Dr.Josef Korbel in his book, “Danger in Kashmir”, comments thus about a Kashmiri, “Centuries of hard life have taught him to be reconciled to the strange role of living in a paradise that treats him poorly, forgotten by all, and helped by none. Obediently and stolidly he accepts the status of the forgotten man in an undiscovered nation. Only those who have visited Kashmir can see this cruel contrast between the nostalgic beauty and power of its scenery and the frightened dark eyes of its countless poor.” This description of the people still holds good even now and one may find it to have become more severe and critical in the context of the present situation. Korbel mentions about the first awakening of Kashmiris. “It was in 1931 that the growing dissatisfaction of the Kashmiri people burst into flame. It was led by a man of twenty-five, an unemployed teacher hitherto unknown but soon to play an important role in the political history of Kashmir-Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah.” After centuries of subjugation Kashmiris had seen a ray of light. They had dreamt of total emancipation. But the deliverer who had arisen among them left them in such a mess that one sees no escape from it. About Sheikh Abdullah Korbel says, “The story of Sheikh Abdullah is a sad and sorry one. It is the story of a patriot, once passionately devoted to his people’s welfare, but one whose patriotism was too shallow to reject temptations of power. Once a fighter, he turned into an opportunist and, worse, a dictator who at the end found himself entangled in the web of his own methods and policy.” This tragedy of leadership was further worsened by shear misfortune. The Independence of the two countries at a time when the struggle of Kashmiris was about to reach fruition made them dependent on the both for their very existence. Their struggle for freedom was lost in an ideological conflict. All these years they have had nothing but total mis-governance. Vincent H .Smith has said, “Few regions in the world can have had worse luck than Kashmir in the matter of government.” This has been compounded by the contradictions of a Kashmiri himself. As GMD Sufi has stated, “The Kashmiri is indeed made up of contradictions. He is timid, yet persistent, degraded yet intellectual, mystical yet adventurous, shrewd and businesslike.” Korbel has given an excellent analysis of the “Real Issue” of Kashmir. It is a visionary satatement still very much valid even today especially because of the fact that it was written in 1951! “If the struggle for Kashmir were a struggle for territory, if it were a struggle for national resources, or for manpower, or struggle for strategic position, or for any of the other prizes for which nations traditionally contest, it might well have been solved some years ago; it might no longer constitute for the entire Sub-continent the menace that today it remains. But it is none of these. At least, not primarily. What makes the problem of Kashmir the nigh insoluble debacle that it is, what makes the leaders of both contending parties dispute in such bitterness and compromise with such grudging reticence, what makes the whole history of its attempted settlement such a record of frustration, annoyance, and exasperation is something more than these traditional causes for international dispute. The real cause of all the bitterness and bloodshed, all the venomed speech, the recalcitrance and suspicion that have characterised the Kashmir dispute is the uncompromising and perhaps uncompromisable struggle of two ways of life, two concepts of political organisation, two scales of values, two spiritual attitudes, that find themselves locked in deadly conflict, a conflict in which Kashmir has become both symbol and battleground.” Even after three destructive wars the conflict refuses to die down. It has gone deeper and has assumed new clandestine forms. The worst part is the dichotomy of friendship on one side and continued covert subversion on the other. All these years the most adversely affected have been the Kashmiris themselves. The worst period in all these sixty years of uncertainty has been the last two decades. The entire Kashmir Society has been shattered and pushed back half a century as regards its development compared to both the countries. On top of everything, Kashmir has been subjected to the increasing siege mentality of converting this paradise into a “Beautiful Prison”. The most vivid demonstration of that is the “Celebration of Independence”. The day has become the most dreaded day of the year for a common Kashmiri. Harassment and humiliation at every step almost a week in advance wreaked by every uniformed soldier regardless of caste, creed, and colour during day as well as during night. At the very bottom of this entire trouble and suffering for more than half century endured by a Kashmiri is nothing but the bewitching beauty of this land aptly described by none other than his own ancient kinsman, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru? “…Like some supremely beautiful woman, whose beauty is almost impersonal and above human desire, such was Kashmir in all its feminine beauty of river and valley and lake and graceful trees…….Kashmir calls back, its pull is stronger than ever; it whispers its magic to the ears, and its memory disturbs the mind. How can they who have fallen under its spell release themselves from its enchantment?” That in brief is the bleeding tragedy of Kashmir revived every year on this “Dependence Day!”