Pinky Kaur’s killing a blow to Kashmiriyat

Pinky, a young girl bubbling with life from a Tral village, is no more. She had fallen prey to the cult of violence that defines the Kashmir valley more than anything else.

Her killers cannot be pardoned even if they were blind and didn’t know whom all the grenade explosion would kill or maim. The violence against any human being is unjust and a crime against humanity.

Public Works Minister Naeem Akhter was not leading an anti-militancy operation that he should have been targeted. He was inaugurating bridges, narrowing the distances, physically and psychologically, between people and places.

Thank God Akhter is safe. Unfortunately, however, an elderly man, Ghulam Nabi, and Pinky Singh on September 21 were added to the long list of the dead that Kashmir keeps updating almost on a daily basis.

Separatists will include them in the census as those who lost their lives for the “cause”, about which they are unsure themselves. The government statistics will cite them as victims for a while before they are shelved in the files to be forgotten forever.

Pinky Kaur was a Sikh girl from Tral, the nerve centre of the new and radicalised militancy. She was one of the representatives of her community of the socio-cultural ethos of Kashmir. Her aspirations to rise high were rooted as a Kashmiri girl.

Her innocent face and disarming smile reflected her love for the land and the people she was living with. Everything has been consigned to the flames. The local Muslims have felt her loss, as if she was their daughter.

There is a sense of guilt over why Pinky was killed.

A host of militant groups condemned the incident and declared their innocence.

Was it a lone wolf attack? Even if it was so then who injected this beastly psyche of measuring the success of a cause in killing innocents like Ghulam Nabi and Pinky. Wherefrom did he get the death and destruction wreaking grenade which left 35 others injured. Answers are needed; simple condemnation will not do.

I am talking of Pinky in the same lines as I invoked the death of Zohra’s father, Abdul Rashid, a policeman who was killed by militants in Anatnag last month. Zohra’s dreams were shattered when she lost her father in an attack by militants. This has become a land where dreams are cut short every day by those worshipping and glorifying bloodletting acts.

How do parents of Zohra and Pinky reconcile with living in this place where dreams are cut short even before they are nurtured fully.

Those who promised big goals are on the back foot for they have no cards to play a fair game. They know how to provoke violence and any shedding of tears by them on the loss of innocent lives is a deception.

Pinky represented Kashmiri coexistence. The grenade thrower and his backers have dented that. Grenades are blind, but the grenade throwers are not. Worst culprits are those who pardon such spine-chilling incidents and continue to call for more bloodshed in search of a paradise in graveyards.