Why They Feel Dignity In Death?

by Waheed Ur Rehman Para

The continuing bloodbath and cycle of death have raised concerns across rational people across the state of Jammu and Kashmir. We are living in a conflict state and in violence – where peace always fluctuates.

No one qualm that there are aspirations and very much political space in this part of the world. Even the Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself time and again reiterated that there is an issue and requires settlement.

Unfortunately, it is the young who are falling prey to death. Young people, who live in a conflict and have seen turmoil so closely that they don’t even seem to be aspiring for peace and the question remains why?

Valley has a large young population of about 60%, born and brought up in conflict and uncertainty. My personal interactions with youth during election campaigns gave me few insights: they are dejected and hopeless; they are usually upset and sad. If we walk through streets, we will see the youth in disposition. They hardly laugh. What’s missing on their faces is happiness.

One may ask why is it so? In some of the interactions with youth, I realized young people wearing same clothes for weeks because they do not feel the requirement of changing their attire. “My day doesn’t start and I haven’t achieved anything till now,” one of the youth, once, told me. “Since nothing has changed around me, where is the requirement of change?”

There is an endless wait for something, they may or may not be able to interpret or articulate. They are emotional with Kashmir and it is their only aim. A collective aim: there is hardly anything called a personal aim in life.

Thousands have died and dozens continue to die. Still, youth are volunteering to this process of death by recruiting themselves as militants.

Today the life of a militant is not more than two months, by and large. Realizing they won’t live long they continue to challenge us and happily celebrate the death.

It holds true to the core, that you can offer anything to the youth but those offering their lives cannot be negotiated so easily.

As a young political worker of the party, I engage youth on daily basis, but convictions, defeat and concessions lay there. These young guys in militancy are unconventional, while we are conventional. They feel dignified to die while we feel dignified to live.

I question the cause they believe in, but they are so convinced that they can give life to it and don’t regret, while we aspire to compensate everything to protect ourselves.

What fails us as mainstream is the will of a militant, that we think is defeated with his death and they think it all begins once he dies.

Deaths are investments to them while life is to us. The recent cycles of violence have a pattern to it and an age design. If we look at the killings in 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2016, it is the young who are getting killed and injured.

Almost 90% of the deaths are children below 18-20 age groups and all those in stone pelting are below 18. All the new recruits to militancy are below 25. This explains the age of engagement.

What we see as radicalization, they call it emancipation. But, here – It is not radicalization, but an age that is involved. If the real problem is radicalization, it will be a much older age to understand religion in puritan form and the real means to have convictions.

There is a sense of defeat among the youth and the wheel isn’t moving. This defeat deepens with every encounter or every attack on security men.

We don’t have common points with our own youth. Our traitors are their role models and their heroes are our enemies. What we celebrate hurts them and what they celebrate – humiliates us.

Our wins are defeats for them and their defeats are our victories. I fail to find a common ground and a win-win situation. The larger religious polarization has vindicated handful of extremists on both sides and failed the middle ground.

We need to tell our youth that they matter to us and they belong to this land. We need to tell them that they haven’t lost it. We have to tell them again and again that we can still reclaim things.

That they could continue to have their aspirations and still be alive and that they don’t need to kill themselves to tell the world that they want to live. They need to be told that the larger dignity lies in life and not in death. That this is a phase and this too shall pass, but what’s lost can’t be recovered.

That they can bring justice to deprived ones if they struggle within and without. That talking to God is good, but there are ways of conversation. That death isn’t the only investment for God and He doesn’t want it. That God doesn’t need you, but you needed him.

Islam belongs to everyone, while everyone may not belong to it. Religion came to save humans, while every human is today claiming to save religion. That religion isn’t in a nation, territory, building or party, but it is an emotion that transcends every border and is beyond territories. There is no mention of land by thy for whom you claim to own a patch.

Someone may tell them and make them understand that you can still spread your faith with your deeds, not your deaths. It is high time to find dignity in life than in death.

(The author is Youth President, PDP. Ideas expressed are his own.)