Hello, friends. It’s been long I have been away from this forum. Since then a lot has been happened in our national and international politics. Unfortunately Kashmir remains on the broil, painfully more than before. The purpose of this thread is to find out a solution of the never ending crisis of Kashmiri militancy which for the last two three years seem to have exploded with a new vigour. No matter how long we, Indians continue to evade this question, this so called once Heaven on Earth remains as a crown of thorns on our head. Although some hawks and ultranationalists attribute this rising unrest to growing Islamic fundamentalism in the valley, time has come for a serious self-introspection and acting upon it.
Why I decided to talk about this is few hours back I watched an Interview with the fathers of two militants, Burhan Wani and Saddam Padder. With absolute calmness and serenity, what the two old men revealed was in fact chilling. When asked about the difference between militancy of the 90’s and militancy of 2016, Mujaffar Wani replied,
”Log encounter ki jagah se door bhagte the (in the 90’s), aaj Encounter ki jagah ki tarah bhagte hain”. According to him people no longer are scared by the police. The fear of death from their heart is completely gone. I will come to these two men again later.
As I have already said, hawks will quickly cry growing radicalism for the upsurge in militancy. But for a moment they need to ponder on the fact why increasing numbers of highly educated youths are joining militancy. Is not this enough to ring the bell that something is really going wrong?
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By blocking all peaceful means of expressing dissent, what remains is self-defence against the armed forces…the way forward is change in the status quo, where power won’t be exercised for the sake of power”
The above was posted on his FB post on 18th April’2018 by Mohammad Rafi Bhat, just month before his death. If some of you are still wondering who he was and why does his fb post matter, Rafi was Assistant Professor of Sociology in the University of Kashmir. All his students describe him as a caring, mild gentleman, intellectual with high scholarship. He always encouraged his students to read and write about Kashmir which according to him was the greatest form of protest. Then why did he decide to pick up guns. The reason lies in his fb post. All peaceful means of protest was lost. The continued killing both of militants by encounter and as well as civilians deeply disturbed him. How Kashmiris are taking the burn of thirty years of militancy, curfews, police picketing, random searches in their houses, how deep these has gone into their psyche: why are we not bringing these questions in national debates in this largest democracy is beyond my comprehension.
As per father of Wani and Padder, excess measures by security forces have reached its peaks and it is not long before even old men start taking up arms against Indian forces. Arrogant, humiliating behaviour which may not raise much hue and cry in rest of India, perhaps is a self shooting idea in Kashmir: our policy makers need to understand this very quickly before it gets out of hand. Faizan, a sixteen year old boy was shot in head, chest, and renal spleen in Pulwama. His doctor father asks a quite simple question: If Indians really think Kashmiris as their own then when they are protesting why police are not shooting according to rules and firing below the knee? In this same video, Faizan’s uncle Muhammad Shareef Poswal also speaks about his nephew. More than what he speaks it was astonishing to see the ambience he kept around him; enlarged pictures of his deceased nephew, both in living and dead. Is it too difficult for us to guess what kind of consequences we are generating by such reckless killings of teenagers?
Before it is too late, let us wake ourselves up. Let us not serve the psychological advantage in a platter to Pakistan it was badly looking for after 26/11. Let us accept that our political stand on Kashmir has been very firm but the way we intend to do it is far from being correct and effective. We cannot afford to act as Israel do with Palestine. Is it too difficult for security forces not to force a local youth to bring cigarettes for them? Is it too difficult for security forces to behave with a smile? Can’t we get rid of this Pellet gun nonsense and think about something else which could be more effective and less harmful? Permanent solution of Kashmir may be distance away, but we, Indians can do these at free of cost. Otherwise what is the use of just having a land when its people are alien to us and we are alien to them?
Please share your views: where exactly we are going wrong and what could be the measures to bring back life into the lives of Kashmiris.
@Joe Shearer @Nilgiri @nair @WAJsal @waz @hellfire Cant remember ur new user ID..
