Time for Kashmiris to throw away the gun

Who killed Shujaat Bukhari? He was surely not killed by the Indian security forces. He fell to the bullets of Kashmiris who came riding on a motorbike and pumped bullets into his body. It was Kashmiri blood spilled by a Kashmiri himself. Is it not sheer madness that a Kashmiri is killed by none other than a Kashmiri? Is it not shocking, too, that Kashmir has come to such a pass that its people are out to spill their own peoples’ blood?

What a tragic situation it is! Nothing describes the Kashmir tragedy better than a tweet by a Kashmiri called Shah Faisal. Please read it: “At Shujaat Bukhari’s funeral today, I realised that life has come to a dead end in Kashmir. We are now nothing but a large crowd of numb mourners going from house to house and graveyard to graveyard, each one of us waiting for our turn to die.”

Imagine the people of a region ‘waiting for their turn to die’. There cannot be anything worse than this state of mind where one doesn’t know how long one would live. But who is responsible for such a tragic situation in Kashmir? You speak to an average Kashmiri and he will blame Indian military forces for their fate. He is after all facing Indian security forces’ bullets in the Valley. If you ask our security forces why they are using guns against their own people, they tell: “If someone fires upon us, we cannot be mute spectators to our own killing.”

It is a catch 22 situation where no one knows who is killing whom and for what reason! But someone must be responsible for pushing Kashmir to such a tragic pass where no one knows how to get out of the maddening cycle of death. The sole responsibility of such a mess lies in the gun culture that was introduced in the one-time peace-loving Valley of Kashmir. But who introduced gun culture in the Valley?

We all know a section of the angry Kashmiri youths took to the gun in the late 1980s. But who gave them the gun? We all know that they were Pakistani guns that came from across the border. But what was Pakistan’s interest in arming Kashmiris? Well, Pakistan army, after its humiliating defeat in the 1971 War, realised that it cannot win a war with the Indian military. So, what to do to avoid another war with India?

The cut and dry solution was to engage the Indian Army in a proxy war. The only way was to provide guns to the Kashmiri youths. Ever since gun culture came to the Valley, Indian Army was engaged in a proxy war with the people of Kashmir in which both are dying every day while Pakistani generals are having the last laugh. It is time now for Kashmiris to throw away the gun and come to the talks table with India. If they do not, they may have to continue mourning many more Shujaat Bukharis!