Kashmiri Rudali's false tears

By Muzamil Jaleel

On December 18 a group of militants barged into the house of Ghulam Qadir Dar in Reban village. They collected the family in a room and opened indiscriminate fire, killing four including a four-year-old child. Their crime: two militants, hiding in Dar's crowshed, had been killed by the army last month and the militants suspected that Dar's son had tipped off the forces, a 'justification' to wipe out the entire family.

On December 19 three teenage girls were gunned down in Rajouri. They had to be killed because they had not heeded to the diktat of the moral police on wearing the burqa. The police said the reason behind the murder of these three girls was not disobedience to the burqa diktat but a suspicion that they were security forces informers.

The latest tragedy of us Kashmiris and our so-called leadership is our selective silence on these brutal incidents.

December 5 was Eid day. The whole of Brangdara village, angry and agitated was on road protesting the atrocity committed by an officer of the local army unit .Armymen opened fire on the protesters, killing one and injuring three others. Next morning, the villagers blocked the road and a huge contingent of 'saviours of Kashmiris' from Shabir Shah to the Hurriyat leadership rushed to the spot to join the protests. Human Rights--they cried in unison--had been violated.

However, when the entire family of Ghulam Qadir  Dar was massacred by militants in Sopore village, the family mourned their tragedy alone. Nobody sympathised with them. Nobody came out on the roads. Nobody protested. There were no calls of protest from the Hurriyat. No leader visited the family. This cold-blooded massacre was not even mentioned in street corner gossip. In the volatile town of Sopore, it was business as usual. An anxious parent said that for years, he had justified the murders in Kashmir as part of the 'freedom struggle' but when the perpetrators are among us, it is hard to explain.

Kashmiris--and I know they are a minority--who did dare to talk about this brutality did it behind the closed doors of their homes. Fear is a genuine problem but this mass and selective silence amounts to actually condoning such massacres.

Murder as a punishment for not wearing burqa is chilling because it does not merely demonstrate militant anger, it also reveals the high level of intolerance of people who wish to use terror as a tactic to implement a social agenda. This had happened earlier in the Valley as well when the faces of three girls in downtown Srinagar were sprayed with acid.

The irony is that the core demand of the struggle of the separatists in Kashmir is seen to be the right to make choices. Kashmiris, they plead, have been deprived of the right to choose their own fate. And when anybody disagrees with them on an issue like burqa-disfiguring of the face by acid of death is seen as the only answer.

Over the past few years, Hurriyat has emerged as nothing but Rudalis--professional mourners--while reacting to violent incidents in Kashmir. They come out on the streets, they shed tears and cry hoarse about human rights violations committed against Kashmiris only after the perpetrators have been classed in the recognizable category of 'enemies'. But when the finger of suspicion is on the 'boys with guns', they prefer to remain silent or take refuge in conspiracy theories. A senior Hurriyat leader when confronted with the Reban massacre, talked about conspiracy and asked for a probe to ascertain the identity of the perpetrators. He even said that the killings will automatically stop once a meaningful process of addressing the Kashmir issue takes off. But even if the identity of the prepetators remains controversial, the intensity of the tragedy is still the same.

Only occasionally does the separatist leadership condemn violent acts but they never protest. But what is more dangerous is the lack of a spontaneous reaction from the common people. Unless the people react to brutality irrespective of the identity of the attackers, Kashmir can never dream of an end to the vicious cycle of death. Silence as a reaction to any sort of violence is nothing but tacit approval.

Source: Indian Express