De-radicalisation talk is hollow

Arun Joshi

THERE is a familiar clamour for de-radicalising the youth in Kashmir. It is to bring them back from their disaster-courting path that is ruining them and the place alike. 

A worry has gripped sensible sections that the psychological siege that has triggered endless civil wars elsewhere can consume Jammu and Kashmir too. But taking de-radicalisation  as the absence of violence  would be a mistake.  The violence is  one of the major manifestations of this ideology of annihilation and zero tolerance of others. 

The radicalisation  has outgrown all  previous estimates. It is having an overt support  for militants and the extremist ideology that they represent. 

Much of  radicalisation  is rooted in the failure of the state in delivering justice. The state  and its institutions  were engaged in subversion of  law and fiddled  with trust of the people — the filing of cases, ordering   inconsequential magisterial probes  became a standard operating procedure  to temporarily  calm tempers instead of delivering justice to victims.

Such subversion   deepened the sense of hurt in Kashmiris who were  looking for peace with dignity. It made the  youth to  jump into the bandwagon of radicalism  in their search for parallel justice. 

The narrators of revenge, hate and misinformation exploit this frustration of the youth.

Alongside, the notion that  their religion is under siege forms a combustible combination  that has portents of catastrophic consequences.

The Kashmir valley is exclusively Muslim, therefore, it is but natural for the youth here to get influenced by what happens in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Pakistan. There is a religious connect fostered by the Internet boom. 

Worse is the justification of  violence  against the other side,  which is seen  as  full of infidels. This is an offshoot of unbridled hate campaign  against the others. They refuse to ask questions from the proclaimed leaders of their “struggle” and religious preachers for they are overwhelmed by the “us vs. them” narrative. It is  a horrifying scenario that  has an Orwellian ring.

As part of this campaign, history is being  erased  selectively as if the other side  was all brute and engineered  massacres, while  choosing  to ignore that  why millions  of Hindus and Sikhs had to flee  in the wake of the tribal invasion assisted by locals in the area which is now under the control of Pakistan. Pamphleteers have been hired by the moneyed ideologues to do the dirty job. The sense of victimhood and revenge  is being  promoted  with new intensity. 

Additional factors have accrued from the three-decade-old armed conflict — human rights abuses, civilian killings, and immunity to the guilty. The growing stigmatisation of cultural differences, social exclusion and marginalisation of young people with almost nil prospects has made Kashmir become  a prime target for jihadist propaganda.

The government is too scared to  identify  the sources of radicalism in a fair manner because it is a party in using extremism for its political ends. It cannot put this genie back into the bottle because it gave wings to it in the first place.  There is a  lack of courage  to say 

that  Kashmir is no 

place for those who call for and incite hatred.

Some of the unfortunate happenings in the rest of the country where the Hindu radicalism is on the rise also fuel strong and violent emotions here. The Centre has neither understood this aspect in a realistic manner nor has sought to address it in right perspective. Its bent of mind to seek solution through the barrel of a gun has only strengthened radicalism  here.

A realistic way out is to change the home narrative. Parents ruing that their children have gone astray, and then making passionate appeals to them to return, need to ponder — haven’t they been party in eroding the original family values when they drew sadistic pleasure  in tutoring kids on hate-India  rhymes.  Hate travels beyond the confines of home.

Unless  soul searching is done, the radicalism will roll on.