Bashir Assad
It is heart-rending to see that scores of youth in Kashmir have lost their eyesight due to pellet injuries. Any civilized society cannot accept this. You cannot physically blind the generation of hope. My heart bleeds on witnessing such atrocities committed by the state.
But my heart equally bleeds for the lakhs of those youngsters who are being blinded metaphorically. They are being denied a highly valuable education – the universally accepted empowerment to seek rights, including the right to freedom.
The people of Kashmir are being subjected to atrocities for the simple reason that the state is a bone of contention between the two south Asian nuclear giants. Kashmiris are the worst sufferers of animosity between India and Pakistan. Its people have been denied basic rights for their socio-economic and political empowerment.
Agreed, that this is the kind of environment that Kashmiris are held in. But here lies the responsibility of a mature political leadership. Such a leadership would strive for the settlement of the problem between India and Pakistan, and also allow its people to grow and prosper with the world.
Kashmir’s political leadership has never appreciated that this is an urbanized, aspirational society. Its people are conscious of their legitimate political rights. They have equally legitimate aspirations of self growth and progress.
Kashmir’s young generation now yearns for fulfillment of their political rights. They aspire to compete in the field of education, research, science and technology. They are even looking towards China for seeking professional excellence in medical and engineering sciences.
In the last few years, young Kashmiris had started competing in the administrative services at the all-India level. We have seen some bright students even opting for abstract physics and doing wonders at international level. Alas! We have blinded them all by pushing them into the conflict.
It is astounding to see a section of the leadership taking pride in transferring the conflict to teenagers. A senior resistance leader, in a private conversation, actually expressed satisfaction that the conflict has now been extended by 80 years. He reasoned that the conflict was now being seen by children aged eight to ten years, who will carry this baggage till old age.
The earlier narrative had been: “We won’t pass on this conflict to the next generation.”
I don’t want to go into the accusations launched by a section of national media that the children of resistance leadership are not in the streets. But I would certainly remind the leadership, whom I respect despite having differences of opinion, that for the last two months, only five or six flights are landing in Srinagar daily from Delhi and other parts of the country.
What is interesting is to watch that the flights taking off from Srinagar are usually packed because the children of the elite Kashmiris are leaving the Valley in huge numbers for their academic pursuit. It is the children of the poor who are suffering physically in the battlefield. They are suffering mentally as they are later targeted and embroiled in cases by the security forces. And finally, they are also suffering educationally.
One who does not get blinded by a pellet physically is blinded metaphorically by the vicious narratives at play in Kashmir.
It is appalling to see the state education minister announcing the dates for the annual exams of Class 10 and 12. He can be desperate for reasons we all know.
What really bothers is the kind of environment in which our children are being asked to sit in the examination. Let us have the courage to accept that by closing the educational institutions and denying education to our children – the children of the poor – will harm our own society, and no one else.
Our leaders are concerned over the gradual systematic change in the demography in civil services, judiciary, revenue services, medical and engineering streams. Are they aware that out of 18,000 applications received by the Public Service Commission for KAS examinations, only 30 per cent candidates are from Kashmir Valley. Tomorrow, when the results are declared, we will cry foul.
Only last week, we strongly agitated against the occupation of school buildings by security weeks, and genuinely so. Now when school buildings are being set ablaze by the handful agitating youth, it is ignored. Is our leadership aware that a sizable number of candidates who qualified the All-India level Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) could not make it for counseling in NIIT Srinagar on due dates because of the disturbances. They lost the opportunity for a bright future.
Should it not be a cause of concern for our leaders? The time has come to introspect.
I don’t want to go into the material losses suffered during the last three months, because these losses can be compensated in time. But the sufferings of the poor are unimaginable during these hard times. I have seen people selling their valuables during the last three months to purchase medicines for their ailing family members, and manage the meals. Their sufferings are heart-rending, and maybe could lead to crimes. Hence we are in the making of criminals. I am not denying the fact that the police and security forces, under the garb of restoring law and order, have resorted to serious criminal acts that actually threaten the legal and justice system. Police stations have become extortion centers. The situation may be a gold mine for them.
In certain cases, such criminal oppression by state forces can be a justification for the expression of anger. But the Kashmiri leadership cannot shy away from its responsibility of devising a strategy which is missing on ground. Even here, education, in its broader sense, is the answer.
Perhaps the state policy is that ‘Let the Kashmiris play it to the climax. Let them get exhausted’.
How did the state evolve this strategy? The answer is that they know the Kashmiri leaders are driven by the situation. There are emotions at work here, not the brain. The Indian state has realized that the Kashmiri leaders, among other factors, get gripped by the situation and do not know how to come out the impasse.
The people of Kashmir want their leaders to be responsive to the situation and responsible for the future they are carving out for the Valley.
(The writer is the Director of Lehar, a think-tank group working in Jammu and Kashmir)
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