The tragic death of Tariq Ahmad of Nowhatta in a brazen act of hooliganism is condemnable. Tariq’s death must act as a moment of soul searching for all – to ensure no innocent suffers and dies in torture, be it in state custody or on streets. But there is no room for politicking on this issue. To hold any particular political belief or formation solely responsible for this act is irresponsible. We need to collectively acknowledge the root cause of incidents like these is basically the decimation of the rule of law in J&K. Hooliganism and torture is all-pervading in almost all spheres of our life, just because there is hardly any accountability. When you have blanket impunity to your security establishment – making a traffic police officer beat a poor bus driver on the road without reason to a security man brow-beating every other moving object on our streets – hooliganism becomes a culture. Because of all this, we witness a serious kind of dehumanisation and apathy in Kashmiri psyche today, which is a mass societal disorder. To ensure such acts don’t occur the Hurriyat Conference and its constituents are as much responsible as the state itself. Even as in this incident no political party was seemingly involved, the two Hurriyats in their political campaigns need to ensure better discipline. Anger is a natural by-product of state repression, which impacts people’s lives in profound ways, and makes them react in desperate ways. But it is unacceptable for any group of people to take extreme steps and harm civilians, and, ironically, those who share their political beliefs. When the chief minister asks separatists to fight on the political turf, that bravado doesn’t seem convincing either. You cannot deny even a minimum political space to your political opponents and expect a political contest. An environment of extremes is not helpful.

Lastupdate on : Fri, 16 Dec 2011 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Fri, 16 Dec 2011 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:00:00 IST