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Open Letter To Burhan Wani
Dear Departed,
Ever since you were terminated in a forces-led operation in the Valley, 23 people have died. I don’t know why they died. The majority were possibly overcome with grief and fury and wanted to avenge your death. That did not happen, for obvious reasons. A policeman was thrown along with his vehicle into a river and he drowned. I grieve with your family and with the families of all those who lost their lives. Despicable though you may have been, I cannot find it in my heart to blame your family.
You could have been an engineer, a doctor, an archeologist or a software programmer but your fate drew you to the seductive world of social media, with its instant celebrity hood and all encompassing fame. You posted pictures on the internet with your “brothers”, all you fine young Rambos holding assault rifles and radio sets. It was right out of Hollywood. Your rifle’s fire selector switch was set to “safe” and your weapon rested on your shoulder. I know it’s too late to advise you on such matters, but NEVER do that in an operational area.
The day you started with your social media blitzkrieg, you were a dead man. You encouraged young men of Kashmir to kill Indian soldiers, all from behind the safety of your Facebook account. Your female fan following was delirious. You were a social media rage. Unknown to you, there was probably some nerd with a laptop sitting in HQ XV Corps, tracking you 24/7. You died when you were 22. Had you survived this operation, you would have died when you were 23. Just a different date on the calendar, that’s all. The intensity of violence and the result would have been the same.
I wish we had met and I could have explained to you (before killing you) that the old men of the Hurriyat Conference are like leech. They feed on the blood of men. They send young Kashmiris to face the Indian Army. What sort of a war is this, where lambs are sent to fight lions?
I would have shown you the sheer duplicity of the Hurriyat, with their sons living abroad, pursuing professions other than jihad. Name one relative of Syed Ali Geelani, the head of the Hurriyat Conference, who is fighting the so-called Indian “occupation”? His son Nayeem Geelani is a doctor in Rawalpindi, and lives under the patronage of the Pakistani ISI. Zahoor, his second son, lives in South Delhi. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq’s sister Rabia is a doctor in the US. Mariyam Andrabi, sister of head of the radical Dukhtran-e-Millat, Asiya Andrabi, along with her family lives in Malaysia. Every Kashmiri separatist leader’s daughter or son is rich and safe, outside Kashmir. Jihad is for other people’s sons.
And your parent’s son is dead. Dead from a 7.62 mm full metal jacket round to the head.
Kashmir’s young and restless blame the security forces for killing them. But they never question the Hurriyat. No one asks Syed Ali Geelani why Burhan Wani is not from his family.
Pakistani media was ecstatic when Kashmiris celebrated Eid this year along with Pakistan and not with the rest of India. This was reported as a blow to the unity of India. This is the first time in the 1400 year history of Islam that Eid was declared, not by witnessing the Shawwal moon, but by looking towards Pakistan. Well done.
The Hurriyat has nothing to do with Kashmiris. This unrest, this bloodshed is just another business. If not, I would like to see the list of martyrs from the Hurriyat leadership’s families.
The Hurriyat knows too well that Kashmir has fallen off the map of the world’s attention. No one cares and everyone knows that it is an artificially manufactured conflict. The Kashmir dispute exists because it is an inexpensive way for Pakistan to keep Indian forces bogged down in the valley.
You were a terrorist. You chose to wage war against India. Like for all other such perpetrators in the past, it didn’t go too well for you. When you choose to fight against the Indian Army, know this; THEY WILL KILL YOU.
Your supporters now want blood. So be it.
Cheers!
Major Gaurav Arya (Veteran)
Shiv Mann, an INDIAN CITIZEN provides a counter-narrative to his pseudo-nationalist sentiment.
Major,
It is easy enough to judge people or popular movements in a self righteous frenzy when you are stubbornly convinced of your ideologies. The death toll has crossed 30, helped in part by government forces going on a rampage of their own, attacking ambulances and hospitals, carrying away patients off stretchers, shooting tear gas into wards and in one case inserting a rod in the bullet injuries of a patient. Attacking hospitals and medical personnel is in violation of International Law, but for the apologists of AFSPA that shouldn’t be much of a concern. As for Wani’s family, I don’t think they care much for what you think of them or their son, so blame away if you want.
I am sure you don’t see the irony in castigating Wani for acting out on social media while our defence personnel do the same, I guess you missed the ads that play on television advertising a glamorous life for recruits. Is it because you think the Indian forces are the “good guys” fighting the good fight, which perhaps renders the pitch justifiable in your eyes?
Running after jobs and rearing a family is the vocation of those living in societies with a semblance of normality. In a war-zone, it is the gun that people go for. Of course, you don’t see the parallels in the struggle against an occupying power with what the HRA/HSRA did during India’s colonial era. Apparently, armed struggle is to be valorised and held in esteem only when it is fought on your behalf. Wani knew he was a dead man walking, so does every boy who picks up the gun in Kashmir, Wani’s death could precipitate a new era of rebellion in the valley, and the people won’t be doing it for popularity on facebook, but simply to die from your bullets. You’d know that as well if you made the effort to listen rather than try to weave your own narrative for their motivations. That Wani managed to live this long is a surprise, not the fact that he was killed.
What the Hurriyat does or does not do is immaterial. Although, the Hurriyat includes Yasin Malik who was part of the 90s militancy as well as other leaders who rot in jails under PSA, I don’t see the need to defend them because they have always taken a backseat during mass uprisings. The demand for an independent state or accession to Pakistan is not limited to the Hurriyat, but is being raised by the vast majority of the Kashmiri people. The primary demand of the HC has been the implementation of the UN Resolution recommending plebiscite for the J&K, Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. It is the failure of non-violent channels, including the Hurriyat Conference, and the imposition of state authorised brutality that is making youth become militants, the Azadi camp right now is just relegated to watching from the sidelines. It is understandable why someone like you, who seems to have panache of painting complex situations in black and white, would see things the way you do.
Actually, Major, two, not one, of his parents’ sons are dead. The younger from the bullet, the elder from torture by the army.
“Kashmir’s young and restless blame the security forces for killing them. But they never question the Hurriyat. No one asks Syed Ali Geelani why Burhan Wani is not from his family.”
What are we to even make of this argument? Are you saying that the people of Kashmir can only question the brutality of the security forces if they at the same time castigate TeH for not killing security forces in retaliation?
Again, what the people of Kashmir do can be a blow to the “unity” of India only if the people of the Vale considered themselves Indians. Every act that catches the attention of the rabid Indian media, and hyper-nationalists, the waving of ISIS flags, celebrating India’s loses in cricket or pledging allegiance to Pakistan, is an act of protest against the yoke of the Indian state. To remind you that oppression and distorted cartography can not engender loyalty to the State.
It is the tragedy of Kashmir, to not be worth the world’s attention, which has allowed atrocities and wanton slaughter to continue without pause. The more than six hundred thousand troops in Kashmir are not there to play with a handful of militants, but to keep an entire people in check.
Burhan Wani did wage a war against the Indian State, I don’t see how that makes him a terrorist, though. You can’t call him a terrorist without indicting yourself as well for the rapes, tortures, enforced disappearances, mass graves, fake encounters, extra judicial killings, illegal detentions that have marked your stay not only in Kashmir but also in Manipur and Nagaland.
Unless you want to be called a hypocrite.
Cheers.
Shiv Mann
Links to the ‘Reply given to Major Arya’s Open Letter by Shiv Mann’ is Here.