Mir Liyakat Nazir
From the last couple of weeks there is a sudden upsurge in the politically motivated write-ups published from Srinagar to impel a campaign to draw a controversial sketch of a person who is the essential breath of the resistance movement in Kashmir.
Criticism for the sake of retrospection is always blessing, but when the criticism becomes part of a covert propaganda of vicious media machines, then it becomes the collective duty of everybody to respond such blatant accusations. It is very unfortunate and a bitter truth that over the period of time, especially since the first Kashmir intifada, a class of conflict managers propped up in the disguise of human rights activists, columnists and writers who manipulated our just cause enough for their personal gains; be in Kashmir or abroad. These arm chair critics vouch a particular ideology marred with famous cliché’s like exhausted, leadership vacuum, change of strategy; exclude religion from the movement and the least is spread despair and despondency among people by their unabated literary lassitude.
Time and again these self styled conflict critics and political pundits have opened another Pandora box, which echoes their old frustration that neither the leader should question the people to introspect nor should communicate the resentment of people to the oppressor.
These conflict mangers are hell bent to confuse the people to that extent where fatigue and the “no more blood” policy seems to be the only way out from the yolk of suppression. Here is the statement which I guess everybody should ponder upon individually: ‘people do not pay heed to the leaders for boycotting polls, it was their weakness and this failure should not be attributed to the leadership’ while referring to the massive participation of people in elections, said the leaders cannot be blamed for letting people down. Does as a nation, we should not introspect ourselves why we were deceived again and again in the name of ‘Autonomy’ or ‘Battle of ideas’ theory by a class which are suffering from the power hubris. How can one get suddenly inspired with the statement that the lack of political space and the aggressive policy of the Union government on Kashmir will encourage the youth to take to arms and sacrifice their lives for the cause.
Everybody knows the prevailing ground situation in the valley and especially the youth are more familiar to it so how come it’s the atrocious and disaster statement I fail to understand. The graffiti in Srinagar reading ‘We Resist to Live’ serves youth of Kashmir their way of resistance.
Both leadership as well as the people needs to retrospect collectively, everybody has rendered sacrifices especially since 1989 defines our character and resilience not fatigue and surrender. It’s not an insult to the sacrifices of the people but it is the moral duty of the tallest leader to remind people of their sacrifices and to safeguard them against the ravens who want to sell them for their piety interests.
The diatribe of these conflict mangers is just a prose and the real leadership is poetry as it goes Khird wakif nahi neeko bud se. bad he jaate ha zalim apne had se….
(Mir Liyakat is a scholar of resistance literature.)
