DOST KHAN / ANCHOR
JAMMU: If Syed Ali Shah Geelani and his hundreds of votaries in Kashmir will say that the hardcore secessionists’ grandson too has a right to get employed; in this case in Sher-e-Kashmir International Convention Complex, Srinagar at a hefty annual retainer- ship of Rs 12 lakh, they are right. But if Geelani gets happy over his grandson’s appointment to a coveted position, then the people of Kashmir have a right to ask the old-man to answer about all those rehabilitating the Valley’s numerous martyrs’ graveyards at his provocation, instigation and indoctrination. There cannot be two yardsticks. For one to get accommodated in SKICC and for hundreds of others to go to ‘heaven’.
What a contrast; sons of the same soil, same blood, same culture having different roles. One, who makes his family reassured about his safety and well-placed in career and other becoming fodder of the demons’ canon. The separatists have been generous enough in thronging the graveyards to offer Fateh, make speeches, bury the dead Mujahid , salute the parents for having produced a martyr and then dispersing heads down. The mourners keep coming and going, separatists keep issuing statements, eulogising the sacrifices and paying visits to the families under full media gaze and then they forget, leaving the broken parents lick their wounds for life.
Job to Geelani’s grandson is not a new development that should shock the people of Kashmir. Two sons of Syed Sallah-ud-Din, the so-called supremo of the PoK based United Jehad Council are in the government jobs. Geelani’s son is a government doctor and so are the kin of many secessionists who are running flourishing enterprises at the cost of poor parents’ kids.
The Mujahids are not the sons or brothers of Geelanis, Maliks, Bhats, Lones, Muftis or Abdullahs. They are the sons of Gulla, Sulla and Jalla; (sorry to nicknaming the respectable of Kashmir but their Messiahs have proven it beyond any doubt). They are the hopes of old parents or brothers of young sisters. They are the daily earners of their poor families. They may be anything for their families, but they mean nothing to the merchants of death in Kashmir other than the show pieces of their shops decorated to run their business.
Has anyone in Kashmir heard sons of Gilani carrying AK 47 or kin of Yasin Malik attaining martyrdom. In fact, Malik chose to be a Gandhi than to be a Mujahid. He gave up the violence to don the mantle of a leader but never made an effort to prevail upon the gun-wielding Mujahids to emulate him. Emulating him would have meant rendering himself irrelevant. Geelani is not giving gun or stones to Naseem Gilani or his gransom Anees-ul-Islam for carrying forward the ‘freedom movement’ but he is working overtime to ensure greener pastures for them. Kashmiris should also ponder over hundreds of social network users, scribes and opinion leaders in the civil society who glamourise Jihad but keep their kin away from it. Doesn’t ‘Janat’ lure their kin to achieve ‘martyrdom’?
Over two and half-decade long ‘freedom movement’ has witnessed ruffians becoming international leaders, small time village Maulanas settling in cozy city mansions and traveling in sedans and rag pickers turning riches. The ‘freedom movement’ has also seen grave yards getting extensions, happy parents becoming destitute, young children turning orphans and brides becoming widows. This is neither a secret nor a ‘malicious campaign’, as the beneficiaries of terrorism may try to make out. The people can see for themselves the harsh realities of the so-called movement. They have not to go anywhere; they have just to peep into the homes of martyred Mujahids in their next door and see the miserable life they have been made to live. They have to walk a distance to see the so-called leaders comforting on the graves of dead.
This is the time when the people of Kashmir should see happenings in right perspective, with open mind and not with jaundiced eyes. After passionate introspection they may find themselves facing the toughest test of life- choosing between the graveyards and peaceful environs of homes. It is also time for Kashmir to revolt like its children did by walking to their schools last year after Syed Ali Geelani’s grand-daughter appeared in a class test in the highly fortified Indoor Stadium with heavy security cover. Now is the time for poor in Kashmir to tell their Messiahas to contribute from their own homes towards Jihad.
