Who is killing whom, and why? We need answers, but from whom?

There is confusion all around. And confusion almost always arises because of no accountability; a bliss for the unscrupulous, who thrive and prosper in the absence of any checks and balances on their power to harm people. They choose their targets with so much ease — come and gun down a policeman (Ghulam Hassan Dar) on a city bridge, incidentally not too far away from a school which witnessed a similar bloodletting last year when two teachers were shot dead there in a similar manner. They again came, walked into a busy Tehsil office in Chadora – this time the victim (Rahul Bhat) was a member of the minority community who was employed there under a central government package.

Recounted here are only two of the countless, and only some recent such incidents which otherwise have been a regular feature of Kashmir’s troubled history. The official grandstanding concerning Kashmir’s political and security situation apart, fact of the matter is that such killings of the innocent people at the hands of faceless killers have all along continued here without much respite. And neither has the state been able to unmask these killers, and put an end to their spiteful cruelties, nor has the society put together any worthwhile response to convey its collective disdain for such evil, sadistic behavior.

Blame it on the prolonged political turmoil, Kashmir has steadily morphed into a place wherein nobody wants to be held accountable for anything. Those who actually have the requisite knowledge to clear the air of current uncertainty, and wherewithal to unmask the ugly truths, have deliberately chosen to promote further confusion because it suits them and their politics.

This is precisely why nobody really wants to bell the cat – publicly speak about who is killing whom and why. Nor is anybody in a position to anticipate or predict who will fall next victim to whom, when, where, and again, WHY. So the dance of death which has been going on here is unlikely to end anytime soon, because we all have collectively failed to send a clear message to the faceless killers about our ‘outrage’ — if at all we really feel outraged by anything!

Actually the truth is that people here do not feel outraged. We didn’t feel outraged when people were/are done to death simply because they were/are affiliated with some mainstream (Unionist) political party. We didn’t show any indignation when people’s bodies were bombed to pieces in broad daylight in full public view simply because someone blamed them of being police informers (‘Mukhbir’). There was no popular resentment to people being killed because they didn’t subscribe to the worldview which their killers felt should have been mainstream and popular belief. There was no collective expression of anger and outrage when a police officer was lynched to death at the Srinagar’s Jama Masjid and that too on blessed night (Shab-e-Qadr).

Instead all these and numerous similar barbarities during the worst pornography of violence Kashmir has seen in its recent history of last three decades seems ok because it came wrapped in an aura of certain politics! Had there really been anything called public outrage, then obviously people here would have long ceased to be a faceless, disoriented mass. They would instead have put a bold face to confront and condemn the cruelty as it deserved to be condemned and confronted, without compartmentalizing tragedies on the basis of political, religious and other lineages of the victims.

But people of this land have failed themselves. Like them, their condemnations too are selective and politically calculated. And as long as it continues to be like this, not much is actually going to change here.

Recall that famous provocative poem written by Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the cowardice of German intellectuals following the Nazis’ rise to power and the subsequent purging of their chosen targets, group after group. “First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist….”

Today Kashmir too has become a place where people of different hues, political leaders included, simply avoid looking in the face of ugly realities, leave aside coming out to openly criticize anything. The gruesome nature of each of the civilian killings that are happening here day in and day out is a wake-up call for the dehumanized and de-sensitized Kashmir.

It’s time that the faceless killers – whosoever they are — are unmasked and their interests and motivations deconstructed so as to make sense of the popular confusion which has for long enjoyed the privilege of status quo. The way the civilians are being killed is absolute madness, and one really wonders if such a behavior could be condoned by anybody. And those who do by giving out confusing signals through their politically loaded statements also merit similar naming and blaming as do those who have become habitual of thrusting their political views and beliefs on others through mad rage.

So, for once, let’s decide: is the kind of behaviour we have gotten used to seeing in the last three decades acceptable in this society? Who has given one set of people the right to use violence against another set of people? Those involved in such incidents must be taken to task. But here again the unfortunate question is who will do so.

Ideally, the state itself has systems in place for dealing with such matters. But partly because of its own follies and partly because of the politics that have become a part of its security calculations, the systems of the state, including its corrective systems, have come to be seen as an adversarial force which won’t be trusted with the job. So, if we don’t trust it, then we will also have to figure out how to deal with such elements, who are having a field day in the ‘absolutist anarchy’ that is ruling the roost in Kashmir. An entire population cannot be left to the mercy of psychotic killers who go on victimizing people at will and yet remain remorseless, and unidentified!

References: 

1- https://www.jkpi.org/one-uninvestigated-killing-leads-to-another-and-another-and-another-and-that-is-what-has-been-happening-in-kashmir/

2-The plight of two victimized women, one living and one dead, tells us how our “selective outrage” has become our “collective inability” to confront all forms of violence – JK Policy Institute

3-Some known facts about the “unknown gunmen” in Kashmir – JK Policy Institute

4-Kashmir’s Killing Machine: Whom to Blame? – JK Policy Institute

5-Targeted killings in Kashmir: Our silence is consent to murder of our own people – JK Policy Institute

6-Wake-up call | Kashmir Images Newspaper