[An excerpt from Shakir Mir's article: "It’s Time to Bring Kashmir’s ‘Miserable Guillotine’ Out from the Shadows", The Wire, 26 Sep 2016]
On Teachers Day, two weeks ago, Javaid Trali, a friend and affiliate of the ruling party, jocularly took to his Facebook, writing, “#HappyTeachersDay to @sageelani, @MirwaizKashmir & Co from children on streets for teaching them how stone age looks like, practically.”
Trali opened a can of worms. His comment was not off the mark, but given the truth that it was under the government’s orders that the police fired pellet guns, it was a morally tenuous line to simply exculpate the authorities while alleging that separatists were solely to blame. He received an angry comment from a person who wrote, “And thanks to you and your government teaching kids what darkness looks like because they’re blinded by you.”
There were also others who wrote as much. I could not disagree with their point of view. Their words were profound and truthful. But when they tried casting all pellet-hit children as mere passive victims of the “offensive raged by the Indian state”, it became problematic.
The other day, I happened to walk past a famous crossroad in the old city. I saw a troop of children not more than 7, hurling stones and shouting pro-Pakistan slogans at policemen. The cops were merely lounging against the balustrade, grinning in their dismissal of the little, harmless protesters. Their task was something else – to not let the real assailants assemble. A little while later, a group of older boys joined the kids, seething with fury and in no mood to play around. Anticipating a threat, it was then that the police snapped out of their reverie and prepped their anti-riot regalia. I left the scene. I don’t know what happened later. The same evening, I came across a Facebook video in which children pumped their fists in the air, wielding ‘guns’ and sloganeering while marching past a police station near the Shaheed Gunj area of Srinagar, barely two miles away from the secretariat.
I marveled at how callous the enablers of violence can be in letting those children push closer to the vortex of death. Granted that cops fighting protests are just angry bulls let loose, but where is the word of caution? Why is it we feel sorry for children only after they turn into a lifeless mass of pockmarked bodies? Why not do something to stem this possibility beforehand? I have never come across a single instance where separatist leaders issued counsel, dissuading children from joining violent mobs. Had they done so, the children would have been alright today. And reading and studying. And preparing for exams. There was always plenty of room to get our act together and preclude the possibility of children falling prey to the security forces. Unless someone, somewhere calculated that dead children, bloodied children, wounded and disfigured children are a potent way of transmitting a political message.
The last person to try sounding a word of caution, Maulvi Showkat Ahmad Shah, found himself blown up by an IED in 2011. Geelani tried to describe this as the Indian army’s doing but was forced to eat humble pie after a militant group owned up the “mistake.”
- Shakir Mir, journalist
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