After
UJC’s statement, all and sundry in Kashmir condemn burning of schools
Ahmed Ali Fayyaz
_________
SRINAGAR, Oct 31: On
Sunday a group of 28 Kashmiri intellectuals, most serving and retired
academics, signed and issued a statement calling for deferment of the annual
examinations for Class 10th and Class 12th besides all
classes as, they argued, the students had failed to complete syllabus due to
the 114-day-long street turbulence.
The statement cautioned
senior PDP leader and Minister of Education Naeem Akhtar for building prestige
and proceeding with his rigidity. It also asked Mehbooba Muti’s government to
stop conducting raids by night for arresting the people allegedly involved in
arranging protests or indulging in stone pelting. The statement, however, did
not carry a word of condemnation or concern over the unidentified miscreants’
attacks on education in the Valley.
In all 26 government and
private schools have been torched and destroyed fully while as attempted have
been made to burn down five more schools. With an unsuccessful attempt on the
Government Middle School at Nagbal, Ganderbal, on Monday evening, as many as 31
educational institutes have been targeted in the last 56 days.
Until Monday, few of the
State’s representative political and social organisation and leaders had come
forward with an unqualified condemnation of the burning spree. When the most
secure and the best protected ruling parties, PDP and BJP, choose to remain
silent, why should anyone expect the opposition parties to stick their neck out
in support of the government?
Let alone contesting the
separatists’ claims and narratives politically, Kashmir’s mainstream
politicians — who have been rotating in opposition and power — have outclassed
one another in appeasing the Hurriyat and other separatist groups and leaders.
Most of the times, particularly when they are in opposition, the Valley’s
mainstream politicians have echoed what the separatists have asserted day in
and day out.
Deferment of the exams was
initiated as a demand by the Hurriyat. One can reproduce it without any fear
from the higher authorities. Hurriyat and other separatist groups have been
daily issuing statement critical of the ‘nocturnal raids’ to arrest the youths.
During the same period, when the attacks began mounting on schools and
Education Minister was caught in the eye of a storm, a national daily exposed
how a prominent leader’s granddaughter had continued her studies with DPS
Srinagar without disturbance and how her internal exams had been conducted at
Indoor Stadium, a CRPF company headquarters for over 25 years now.
The statement from
intelligentsia steered clear of it all and did selectively project what the
Hurriyat has been demanding. Some people across Pir Panjal mountain have
dismissed it as ‘hypocrisy and intellectual bankruptcy’, though it is effortlessly
understandable that nobody in the Valley’s hostile atmosphere can sail against
the storm.
Like on many occasions in
the past, it was none other than the guerrilla camp itself that pioneered
condemning the burning of schools. United Jehad Council’s and Hizbul Mujahideen’s
Pakistan-based supremo Syed Salahuddin called the miscreants as “stooges of the
government” who, according to him, were torching the educational institutes for
the purpose of “defaming the freedom struggle”.
On Monday, Salahuddin’s
statement was followed by almost all the mainstream and separatist outfits,
each of them invariably condemning burning of the schools. This speaks volumes
about the originality and straightforwardness of the Valley’s political,
social, religious and intellectual leaders. Had they come forward and said what
the UJC chief today said, they would have run a risk but definitely lived as
hallowed leaders in the State’s political history.
END
[For STATE TIMES]
