- Bloodied Srinagar valley grieves yet again
The Sunday massacre in Shopian of 10 Kashmiris (with over 30 injured) including cold-blooded murder of five civilians by desperate, trigger-happy security forces who fired directly on protestors, has brought the besieged region, long living under the shadow of Indian guns, to another complete standstill, with daily life paralysed indefinitely by a strike and the valley in mourning. The cycle of indiscriminate killing and daily carnage by Indian occupation troops is intensifying savagely by the day, but, in a tribute to the irrepressible and uncowed human spirit, Kashmiri defiance and determination is also growing correspondingly, despite presence of 500,000 Indian soldiers. Truly, ‘brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art, For there thy habitation is the heart…’ But the ‘paradise on earth’ has been turned into a solitary confinement cell or a concentration camp.
Among the Sunday martyrs were Professor Mohammad Rafi Bhatt, PhD, a sociology professor in Kashmir University, forced into militancy by Indian forces’ arrogant repression and humiliation of his compatriots, including women, children and students, Saddam Paddar, a protégé of folk-hero late Burhan Wani, and another veteran freedom fighter Tauseef Sheikh, with the Indian authorities boasting that the militant network in South Kashmir stands disrupted and further recruitment likely to diminish, as the latter two individuals were ‘influential motivators and new leaders’. But the truth might turn out to be quite different, as the trio, including the professor, who refused to surrender to security forces even when surrounded and preferred martyrdom, might well spawn and inspire a whole new generation of students and youth to join the militant cause.
The familiar, but in the past, failed browbeating measures are being repeated in the valley: placing separatist Hurriyat leaders under house arrest or protective custody, suspending mobile phones’ internet and trains’ service, and closing down educational institutions, markets, banks and petrol pumps, in effect shutting down the valley. Military action is a temporary solution, it cannot reverse the rising tide of militancy or alleviate the growing anger of young Kashmiris. There can only be a ‘political way forward’, and the sooner India realises it, the better. For, no one can take away freedom from another without losing his own.
