Amir, you were not to die like this!

Arun Joshi

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I join in the mourning for Amir Nazir Wani, the teenager who was killed during protests near the encounter site at Padgampora village of Pulwama district on Thursday. He was not born to die at this age, and like this. My heart goes out to his parents who must have pinned high hopes on him and dreamt of his becoming a big man some day.

The boy was not known to me, and he must have been a stranger to many at the encounter site, where two militants were killed. There was something chilling about his death. His innocence, age, and the dreams of his parents were cut short by a bullet that hit him.

This is tragically a familiar sight in Kashmir. Except for the parents, perhaps everyone else has lost count of the youngsters who have died in the conflict over the past three decades. Once the burial is over and the pledges of revenge fade, young boys like Amir are reduced to cold statistics.

For the time being, a simple explanation is that 15-year-old Amir died because he received a bullet in his chest fired by the security forces. That is all. No more questions would ever be asked, nor answered.

Amir hailed from Begumbagh village, at least 10 km from Padgampora in Pulwama district of south Kashmir. He was a student at Kakpora school, which is close to his village. He had travelled to the encounter site and joined the stone-throwing crowds in a bid to help the militants, holed up in a house, escape. In short, he was a motivated young boy, hailing from a militancy-infested area.

There is an unbridled support for militants among all age groups. For certain, this must have been reason that he joined those rushing to the site of the gun battle to show his solidarity with the trapped militants and throw stones to rip apart the security cordon so that the “mujahideen” (warriors) could escape. Their escape would have been the protesters’ victory. For that moment of triumph, they were willing to risk their lives. In this case, that clinching moment never arrived, for the two Lashkar militants were killed and the young boy lost his life too.

In Kashmir, the conflict curriculum has made the people aware of consequences of their actions. In that sense, Amir knew what he was walking into, with or without the knowledge of his parents. The casualties during the five-month-long unrest in 2016 demonstrated that the youth were on their own. They would not listen to their parents, who would often come to know about the death of their offspring when their bodies were brought home wrapped in a shroud with hundreds chanting pro-freedom and anti-India slogans.

Parents, irrespective of deep wounds in their hearts over the deaths, compulsively accept the “martyrdom” conferred on their children. The crowd’s sloganeering is so fiery that they have no other option but to fight back their tears.

They cannot mourn the death of their children for they have to reconcile to the loss of their near and dear ones with tearless eyes in public. This is the rigid intent forced upon them.