In Uttarakhand, it’s time to talk over the Pulwama attack
Photo: HuffPost India
By Malika Pandey
Following the Pulwama attack, the enmity towards the Kashmiri students has made me interrogate the rule of law because of the threat of lumpenization of public sphere. The Pulwama attack has galvanized the natives of Uttarakhand who threatened the Kashmiri students to immediately leave the state after the insensitive comments made by a few students following the terror attacks. The natives feel affinity to the Indian army as a large number of their kith and kin serve the country. The condition got complicated further when four sons of the Himalayan state got martyred and saw some Kashmiri students celebrating these deaths.
I was enormously troubled when the news of this palpable and pervasive anger amongst people and their oppression towards Kashmiris reached me. Throughout the world we see people either fighting for power and fame. Then there are those who fight for justice and decency. Although I highly condemn the Pulwama attack where more than 40 of our CRPF jawans were martyred, our fight should be against militancy and not against the people.
There were a lot of Kashmiri students who conspicuously refrained from saying anything about the terror attacks. Despite this they were berated by people. The students who have come from these fringe places to the cities in search of better education and opportunities have the fundamental right to live. It is our political and moral responsibility to be empathetic towards them and not take law in our hands. Two colleges of Dehradun city – Alpine College of Management and Baba Farid institute of Technology – have decided not to admit any of them in upcoming academic sessions. This hostility should be replaced by an insight about soliciting people’s support towards peace and not war-like situations. Telling the students to leave their premises by the landlords and allegedly beating unarmed students in Dehradun have signaled the scale and intensity of depredations being faced by them. Yet there are people from the city and Khalsa Aid Foundation who have come to the rescue of the students. We need to understand that all lives are important – from those of our army men to Kashmiris. We need to show solidarity for both.
As someone from Uttarakhand, which has always been famous for its immeasurable generosity, I would like to say that we all need to continue to live up to our ideals. In times of crisis, we ought not to forsake our fellow beings. We need to understand the actual faultiness which have been blurred and how situations have turned out to be a battleground for power politics. We need to refocus our attention towards building appropriate spaces and empathetic attitude towards one another. The trust deficit can only be bridged when we remake alliances and look towards all possibilities and perils, so as not to make any community alienated because in the end it is the humanity which is all we have. This mutuality between groups is more important than ever before.
Bio:
Malika Pandey is doing Bachelors in Political Science at the University of Delhi.
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3 Responses to “In Uttarakhand, it’s time to talk over the Pulwama attack”
Great article! I believe that no time shall be wasted in blaming anybody and belittling others. There must be mutual trust built between the 2 groups.
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A majority of us feel the same way as you Malika but a few of us behave exactly as the militants want us to respond, by targetting people who aren’t guilty we fall right into the hands of the very people we try and portray as radicals. Even if they are guilty we are supposed to be a law abiding state where the guilty are punished in a court and not on the streets by mobs behaving as patriots!!!
Most of these must be driven my politicians with small term ambitions for a few moments of publicity! These people are as dangerous as the militants!
Every Indian has the right to live/ work/travel wherever they want to in the country and wherever they can’t is a definite problem for the government to address!
Dear Malika,
A very well articulated, researched, balanced & logical writeup on the subject.
We all know that the ghastly & heinous terrorists attack in Pulwama, wherein we lost more than 44 Braveheart Martyred of CRPF is very inhumane, shameful& disgraceful act of cowardice by Our known adversaries.
Well! The issue & concern that why should other innocent people of Kashmir should be made to suffer & citizens of other State brand every people of Kashmir as Anti Nationals. If the attacks & threat on Kashmiri people in other states are authentic, then it’s really a point of concern for this great democratic & most tolerant Country India.
Let the Security Forces retaliated & take revenge strongly against it’s adversaries & it’s terrorists organisation. But the people of Kashmir in other states are being punished for terrorist attack in Pulwama, then we are getting trapped into tbe nefarious & malafide design of our adversary, as it’s objective is to create an atmosphere of insecurity, hatred, instability, violence & unrest in our Country.
Let’s all be matured, sensible & objective in our approach in present crisis & situation. We as citizens must remain united, have cohesion, calm& peaceful within our Country & let our Security Forces handle the situations with the perpetrators & adversaries responsible for their heinous crimes. Else we shall be repeating the Genocide of Kashmiri Pandits, massacre of Sikhs, etc which were triggered & influenced by Our adversaries, who are perpetual & known for creating violence & unrest in our Country through such proxy wars.
Jai Hind & Jai Bharat… Vande Matram…👊👊👍👍🌹💐🌹💐