Can young Kashmir choose a future free of conflict?

It is refreshing to see students throng examination centres to take their Class 10 and 12 annual exams in Kashmir. And reassuring too. After months of mayhem, which climaxed with arson within school premises, children taking their exams have kindled hope that not everything is lost.

Now, looking back at what happened in past four months – what’s our standard response to it? A sense of loss, even remorse?Can it bring back the lives lost, and the dreams cut short by mindless violence?Nearly a hundred people, including children and women have been killed in yet another Kashmir summer, the season which otherwise presents the Valley as a heavenly spectacle.

More tragic is that a number of youth were blinded and still others have suffered various degree of visual impairment. Those who lost their loved ones have been devastated, but the remaining population too has been affected — directly and indirectly.

This is our tragedy, but who must we blame? Security forces or the unruly mobs, the “indifferent” political establishment or those invisible hands and minds whose sole aim is to perpetuate the endless cycle of unbridled violence in the Valley?

There are allegations that security forces used violated Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) leading to civilian killings and injuries. But the counter-narrative is that firing was the last resort for security forces under attack from violent mobs.

There could be strong reasons to believe that, in some instances, the SOPs were overlooked, but then how does one justify actions like pushing a policeman travelling in a car to death — into the river? Had he been armed, wouldn’t have opened fire to save his life? But that would have meant more deaths.

This blamegame is certainly not going to offer solace the ill-fated families who lost their loved ones – a policeman’s or those of stone-pelters. The government has the legal, constitutional and moral responsibility to probe all these incidents of violence and fix responsibility on the perpetrators. Whatever the situation, the guilty must not go unpunished.

Chief minister Mehbooba Mufti has made a public commitment that justice will be done. She took to the streets seeking justice against the civilian killings of early 2010. Now she is herself the authority, and will have to do what she has professed to all along.

But let’s also not pass a sweeping judgment and blame her for everything that happened this summer. Yes, people have a right to (and they should) ask her to investigate the civilian killings and injuries, but to be fair to her, she needs to be given a chance to prove her commitments about delivery of justice, without succumbing to fear or favour. But this can only happen when the Valley returns to normalcy.

Expressing political beliefs, even if it’s through protests, is our right. We must resist attempts aimed at curbing this right. But what purpose does it serve when we attack the police or security forces’ posts that end retaliation and hence, civilian killings? Who provokes us and why for such mindless acts which besides bringing us physical harm also create misgivings about our expression of “genuine” political issues and grievances?

By the way, how does mowing down someone’s apple orchard or smashing someone’s car or burning a school or government building help the “popular cause”? Far from being an expression of “genuine political dismay”, it is a direct attack on our own people, their safety and security, their livelihoods, and on our national assets.

We are still struggling to rebuild the damaged infrastructure like schools, hospitals and bridges that were damaged in the '90s. By targeting schools and other public infrastructure afresh, who are we hurting?

While the basic political issue of Kashmir remains to be resolved even after nearly seven decades, events that unfolded in 2008, 2009 and 2010 and now again in 2016 have brought us face to face with a new generation of young Kashmiris, which is alienated. They need to be heard, and not pushed aside or shouted down.

But as we seek a permanent solution to the Kashmir problem, can we afford to ignore normal life processes, like the education of our children? A Kashmir where education is kept subservient to politics, where people are forced to hug “unfreedoms” of all kinds and types for some “larger freedom” which actually lacks specificity, fails to resonate with the values and interests of the people who are at the core of any political movement.

It goes without saying that the government has to initiate steps towards meaningful and fruitful engagement in Kashmir, particularly with the youth. Their lives and their future have to be protected. But this can’t be done as long as we lose our way to meaningless violence, which brings death and destruction.

The political leadership of all shades, parents and elders of our society need to take charge and guide the young towards the path of knowledge and enlightenment. We have every right to fight for our political ideals and goals, but it is a sin to sacrifice our youth for it. Nothing is more important than the life, and we all must create and encourage the situation in which life is safe.

In the days of ancient Rome, an old woman is said to have approached the king, known as Tarquin the Proud, with an offer to sell him a treasure of nine books she claimed contained all the wisdom of the world.

When asked the price, she named an immense sum of gold. King Tarquin laughed. The old woman did not reply but simply took three of the books and proceeded to burn them. Then calmly she offered Tarquin the remaining six books -- for the very same price. The king laughed even harder and exclaimed: “Why would I pay for six books what I would not pay for nine?”

So the old woman put another three books in the fire and once again offered to sell the remaining ones, now only three, for the same price. Tarquin became unnerved. What if she was right and those books did contain the wisdom of the world? As the old woman prepared to set the last three books on fire, he broke down and agreed to pay her the price. Those three books known as “Sibylline Oracles” became one of the greatest treasures of ancient Rome, frequently consulted by the leadership in crises and credited with helping save the city.

Confronted with frequent crises in Kashmir, the crises of situational and political turbulence that have given birth to the culture of self-inflicting "hartals" and sure-loser confrontations, each of us faces a version of Tarquin’s choice.

Like King Tarquin, we have before us a rare treasure we could save, in our case our youth, their lives and livelihoods as well as the name and image of our people and this land. As with the nine books, there is a certain unvarying price to pay. That price is to give up our fatalistic beliefs about self-flagellating confrontations so as to be willing to evolve better and less destructive tactics to confront the “injustices” if at all that is what is to be done.

Some may think, just as King Tarquin did, that the price is steep and unrealistic. Others may question whether the promised treasure is truly obtainable. We can choose to wait just as Tarquin did until one third or even two-thirds of the treasure (in our case the precious human lives) are destroyed. Or we can save lives now by bidding goodbye to the self-inflicting politics. The choice is ours.