Will the leadership of Kashmir unanimously abjure violence?

By Novita Singh Two children were killed and three persons injured when a shell exploded at Maloora on the outskirts of Srinagar city on Sunday, February, 13. The shell exploded inside the house of one Muhammad Maqbool Bhat when the children were

fiddling with it. All the five injured were rushed to SKIMS Hospital at Bemina where two of them were declared brought dead. The deceased have been identified as 14 year old Noor Muhammed and nine years old Bismah. The injured were identified as Yasmeena Begum, Mumtazi Ahmad and four year old Muskaan.

The condition of two of the three injured is stated to be critical. Mohd Maqbool Bhat has indeed paid a very heavy price for keeping unauthorised war like material inside his house. Further investigations which must be underway will elucidate his reasons for doing so. Earlier this month, on the evening of January, 31, two heavily armed men entered a house in the Muslim Peer locality of Sopore in Baramullah district and dragged out two female teenagers – Akhtara and Arifa. The girls were abducted and later their bodies were recovered from a close by area riddled with bullets. The men behind the masks and the killings are believed to be Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorists. The reason behind the killing is suspected to be either moral policing or that the girls belonged to a family suspected to be informers of the security forces. Whatever the reason, the fact that two armed gunmen are able to carry out a gruesome killing of this sort in the presence of witnesses can only suggest the level of control that they exercise. After all, what does one expect when extremism as a theory to free Kashmir is openly espoused and preached to economically driven and religiously motivated youth. These events give credence to the oft repeated stand taken by the security forces that terrorism may be on the wane but it has not been totally eradicated. This loss of innocent human life can be attributed to the terrorists, the very terrorists who claim to be Jihadis espousing the cause of freedom of the Kashmiri people. The silence of the separatists after the incident on January, 31, prompted the Chief Minister to comment on the double standards observed by these people. “…this brings out the contradictions in Kashmir,” said an angry Omar Abdullah, “If there was the slightest indication of high handedness of the forces today the whole valley would have been up in flames but since terrorist are involved, condemnation, if any, is muted.” It was only after acute pressure from the media as also universal disapproval that the separatists condemned the dastardly act albeit in a muted manner. Hurriyat hardliner Syed Ali Geelani, most predictably, called for a shut down and demanded an impartial probe into the killings. Such is the limit of his subjugation to the violent and barbaric forces that are playing havoc

on his land

and his people that he does not openly talk against even daylight murders. Geelani’s response to the Chief Minister’s statement in the form of a shutdown may be a political move to win over the sentiment driven masses but one is well aware that it does not alter his and the Hurriyat’s extremist

theories that support the terrorist infiltration from Pakistan into Kashmir. Extremism as a method can never attain any end, because the evangelists carrying the burden of freeing the people from unholy

governance use the name of religion to justify not only their brutal acts but their very criminal existence. We are not Pakistan, where the killing of a man (a political figure) is lauded because it was carried out to protect the sanctity of Islam and the killer receives the status of a national hero instead of a criminal conviction. Our society is heterogeneous and our constitution ascertains the protection of many co-existing religious values. Undeniably, there have been casualties as collateral damage during conduct of anti-terrorist activities

by the security forces but these have been few because of rigid control on the use

of force in civilian areas. Such unfortunate happenings, in no way, discount the deaths caused by terrorist atrocity in the form of explosions, mass murders and wanton killings or for that matter, the separatists’ funded stone pelting. The dichotomy of beliefs in the valley has turned into propaganda at various levels and amid the varying levels of propaganda what the actual Kashmir wants, cannot be heard. The many proponents of Kashmir’s freedom movement, for once, need to set aside their personal schemas of power and an assumed rigidness of beliefs. Geelani and the like, guiding the many directionless of the populace, need to look beyond their Pakistan based political leanings and understand the complexities and the danger of being Pakistan. Kashmir today stands torn from various sides, but the people of Kashmir

need to see for themselves and decide as to where they are headed with the extremist agendas determining their existence and guiding their survival. What would be Geelani reaction now that five

innocents at Maloora, mostly children, have suffered due

to the prevailing gun culture. Will he exhort his people to move away from the terrorists and give up the idea of militancy? Will he ask the foreign terrorists to leave his soil and allow his people to resolve their political issues in their own manner? Or will he insinuate that the explosives were left in the house of Maqbool Bhat by the security forces? His response and that of his ilk will be eagerly watched by the Indian and the global community. As Kashmir comes to terms with the death of some more innocents at the hands terrorism the dangers of a disruption in the fragile state of peace once again come to the fore. A continuation in the existing level of vigilance by the security forces in the region also

gains significance