I grew up reading a newspaper that had a prominent headline of a terrorist being killed almost every day in an anti-insurgent operation. A terror attack did ring the alarm bells but i never found such things holding attention of too many people for a prolonged time. It seemed that even though these dastardly acts have been happening for a long time but sooner or later they might stop. For a decade or so after having moved out of the state and reading about the decreased reports of counter terrorist operations i had begun to hope against hope that something called peace may finally prevail across the valley. Even though there was a lot of unrest coming up in other areas of the world leading to a lot of innocent people being killed all around but somehow a glitter of light presented itself in the Kashmir valley. Mass activities by the governments to get across jobs and educations to the people, reports of youth returning to setup businesses , to scale up coaching institutes sparked that fire of hope again.
Come July 2016 and a terrorist is proclaimed a hero and splashed across all the media houses over the electronic and print mediums and more than ten days after this drama started i still wonder why.
I read the reports, the blogs, the nationalistic and anti-national views that people have, the sympathizers for the people living in Kashmir and the people against them, the statements of politicians and activists suggesting he should not have been killed and open letters addressing what the armed forces have been facing in the last two weeks in the valley. All this while i fail to understand why was "this kid gone wrong" given so much mileage and brought to the national attention. Wasn't he just like one of those thousands terrorists who have been accorded the term martyr all these years that terrorism has infested the state with. Shouldn't this guy have gone to oblivion just like them for all of them raised arms against this Nation and they don't deserve anything better?
They say that they took to guns because their brothers, family members were killed by the armed forces. If we go by that logic then lakhs of Kashmiri Pandits should have taken up arms against their neighbours who had been living with them for generations. The Sikhs should have gone on a killing spree after scores of them were massacred at a point blank range in Chittisingpura. If picking up arms and creating videos on social media threatening the armed forces who till last year were helping and protecting your own people during the floods is the way to retaliate then i guess a serious introspection needs to be carried out among the youth living in the country. If this is what they call Aazadi then they do need to be taught the meaning of freedom all over again. The IAS officers and the cricketers should have been made heroes and emulated by the youth instead what we see is people throwing stones at armed forces just because they killed a terrorist who threatened to kill the army men.
Do the people who hold sympathies for the killed terrorists even remember a man named Farooq Dar ( Bitta Karate) who was garlanded at his home town a decade back after his release from captivity just because the people remembered his so called great deeds. The deeds which involved killing more than fifty people from point blank range in the starting 90's and which would have warranted much more than just getting an imprisonment for sixteen years. Would these so called intellectuals still sympathize with such people just because their minds do not intend to understand the gravity of the deeds that have already been performed?
They call it the heaven on earth, but as far as my memory goes I have grown up to the reports and media shots of the heaven being burnt, of hell being blown over upon everyone living there or associated with the people who resided there. I can't really think of this ideological and demographical difference between people of almost the same area being resolved in the near future but i feel that Kashmir doesn't really need separatists. It doesn't need Burhan Wani and the people like him wielding guns and it doesn't need their ideologies. It needs its own people who are willing to put their blood and sweat on boil to see the state grow out of this turmoil. It needs new heroes and new people who are willing to foresee the future. It needs people who could understand that the tourism industry can only thrive with the help of the Indian people and not when Kashmir is an independent entity. It needs people who believe in their own dreams for all of us Indians dream that the Crown of this Country would someday become the shining light for the world to see.
Being a Kashmiri who doesn't have any memories of visiting the so called heaven i deeply wish that someday there is enough harmony to allure the youngsters to go back to the place where their forefathers lived and grew up so that they could breathe the so called fresh air with some lasting peace and take down happy memories forever.
"kho sii gayii hai wo Junnuniyat aur wo Insaaniyat,
kho gayii hai wo jannat naa dikhti hai ab kahii mohabbat,
na kuch karne ka junnon hai, na kisi insaan ke liye hai duaa..
karni padegi mehnat, chodke us bandook ka yeh nasha,
chalo chalen fir paane un vaadiyo ki wo mehakti hawa...!"
Come July 2016 and a terrorist is proclaimed a hero and splashed across all the media houses over the electronic and print mediums and more than ten days after this drama started i still wonder why.
I read the reports, the blogs, the nationalistic and anti-national views that people have, the sympathizers for the people living in Kashmir and the people against them, the statements of politicians and activists suggesting he should not have been killed and open letters addressing what the armed forces have been facing in the last two weeks in the valley. All this while i fail to understand why was "this kid gone wrong" given so much mileage and brought to the national attention. Wasn't he just like one of those thousands terrorists who have been accorded the term martyr all these years that terrorism has infested the state with. Shouldn't this guy have gone to oblivion just like them for all of them raised arms against this Nation and they don't deserve anything better?
They say that they took to guns because their brothers, family members were killed by the armed forces. If we go by that logic then lakhs of Kashmiri Pandits should have taken up arms against their neighbours who had been living with them for generations. The Sikhs should have gone on a killing spree after scores of them were massacred at a point blank range in Chittisingpura. If picking up arms and creating videos on social media threatening the armed forces who till last year were helping and protecting your own people during the floods is the way to retaliate then i guess a serious introspection needs to be carried out among the youth living in the country. If this is what they call Aazadi then they do need to be taught the meaning of freedom all over again. The IAS officers and the cricketers should have been made heroes and emulated by the youth instead what we see is people throwing stones at armed forces just because they killed a terrorist who threatened to kill the army men.
Do the people who hold sympathies for the killed terrorists even remember a man named Farooq Dar ( Bitta Karate) who was garlanded at his home town a decade back after his release from captivity just because the people remembered his so called great deeds. The deeds which involved killing more than fifty people from point blank range in the starting 90's and which would have warranted much more than just getting an imprisonment for sixteen years. Would these so called intellectuals still sympathize with such people just because their minds do not intend to understand the gravity of the deeds that have already been performed?
They call it the heaven on earth, but as far as my memory goes I have grown up to the reports and media shots of the heaven being burnt, of hell being blown over upon everyone living there or associated with the people who resided there. I can't really think of this ideological and demographical difference between people of almost the same area being resolved in the near future but i feel that Kashmir doesn't really need separatists. It doesn't need Burhan Wani and the people like him wielding guns and it doesn't need their ideologies. It needs its own people who are willing to put their blood and sweat on boil to see the state grow out of this turmoil. It needs new heroes and new people who are willing to foresee the future. It needs people who could understand that the tourism industry can only thrive with the help of the Indian people and not when Kashmir is an independent entity. It needs people who believe in their own dreams for all of us Indians dream that the Crown of this Country would someday become the shining light for the world to see.
Being a Kashmiri who doesn't have any memories of visiting the so called heaven i deeply wish that someday there is enough harmony to allure the youngsters to go back to the place where their forefathers lived and grew up so that they could breathe the so called fresh air with some lasting peace and take down happy memories forever.
"kho sii gayii hai wo Junnuniyat aur wo Insaaniyat,
kho gayii hai wo jannat naa dikhti hai ab kahii mohabbat,
na kuch karne ka junnon hai, na kisi insaan ke liye hai duaa..
karni padegi mehnat, chodke us bandook ka yeh nasha,
chalo chalen fir paane un vaadiyo ki wo mehakti hawa...!"
10 on 10 and so insanely true.. Btw, a good intellectual thought spread across in the article.. Well written Bijoy..!! :)
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