Blood on our hands

The people who turn the killers into role models should be proud of themselves today. They have snatched a bright star from the now fast darkening sky of intellectuals of Kashmir. How must be Babar Qadri’s wife feeling right now? Her husband just got killed for having a voice. A voice with which I might have differed from, ideologically, but it represented a sane mentality within Kashmir.

We have let go of civility and turned into a tribe which has zero space for discussion and debate, all thanks to the violence. A voice has been silenced, a pen broken into pieces.

   

I had an opposite stance from that of Babar but the right to life is an absolute, inviolable right whose violator is a murderer and a criminal. We better start calling out killers for what they are and that is just a destructive force that exists to keep the lives of civilians miserable. It all exists to inflict and maintain fear within the society.

This act of brutality is further going to silence the voices who want to change the destiny of this place and it is high time that it is socially discouraged and declared a social evil. It is a responsibility of the civil society to act as reformers and save this place from becoming a blood-fest.

It is high time we turn civil and start valuing human life. People who encourage violence have the blood of Babar on their hands. It is not late for them to repent. For families to be saved, for life to be preserved, we have to start valuing life and come out of the conservative shells that have been woven around us through propaganda by the destructive forces.

These forces are playing with the blood of the people of Kashmir, making them kill their own people just to keep the spiral of instability running round. If we don’t get in our senses there will be no difference between cannibals and us. We have to rise and assemble into a civilized social setup where we have to choose life over death.

We have to preach and teach life. It is a request to the parents, that please don’t encourage violence in your children. By doing so we are extinguishing the lamps of other houses and making our children sin badly in the name of virtue. No one can imagine the pain Babar’s family would be going through right now.

We have to start rationalizing our approach to living, and stop glorifying death by giving it a shape of a holy thing. It is not, it never was and it never can be. Killing unarmed innocents is the biggest sin that can be done and encouraging this behavior turns all of us into murderers.

Mir Junaid is the party president of Jammu Kashmir Workers Party. He is a lawyer by education from Law School at Kashmir University. Besides, he is a regular writer for national and international dailies and journals.

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