Anatomy of An Anarchist -- A Kashmiri Tragedy

On the first day I landed in Srinagar, I read in the flight about Tahir Wani, a 13-year-old boy who had been hit by a teargas shell in his abdomen and died. I wanted to meet his family, find out how he had become part of the agitation, how he had even been allowed by his family to venture out on the street when there was a curfew on.

Where I come from, 13-year-olds are usually preoccupied with Play Stations and are so sheltered that they would not be allowed to go to the nearby park to play if there was so much as even a hint of a thundershower.

I sought the help of a local journalist to locate the boy’s family and find out more about his background. I was told Tahir’s family lived in “downtown” Srinagar, where the situation was fairly “tense”.

Over the next couple of days, I found out that Tahir’s father had been picked up the security forces in 1996, ostensibly for “questioning”, and never returned home. Three years later, Tahir’s elder brother had crossed the Line Of Control and went to Pakistan-administered Kashmir to join the Mujahideen. The family has no information whether he is dead or alive.

Even before I had met the family, one question had been answered. With a background like that, it wasn’t difficult to fathom why Tahir was out on the street, braving the curfew.

Tahir is survived by his mother and two sisters. On the day I was supposed to meet Tahir’s family, we found out that his grandparents have thrown out his mother and two sisters from their home. Tahir’s grandparents said the mother and her two daughters were “ill omen for the family as they were responsible for the disappearance and death of the men folk in the family”. In Kashmir, as in any other conflict-zone, the women were the worst sufferers.

The three women had left for Baramullah, 60 km from Srinagar, where Tahir’s maternal uncle lived. Eventually logistical issues ensured that we couldn’t go to Baramullah to meet Tahir’s mother and his two sisters.

But in the ten days that I was in Kashmir I met number of young boys, boys like Tahir, who were at the centre of the agitation against the transfer of land over the Amarnath Yatra, and the subsequent economic blocade of the Kashmir valley.

In Srinagar’s SMRH Hospital, choc-a-bloc with bullet-injury patients (bullets that security forces claim they have never fired), we met another young boy, who had been shot in the leg. I don’t remember his name. Through clenched teeth (he said he was still in considerable pain), he assured us that as soon as he was back on his two feet, he would join the struggle for azadi (independence).

A majority of the agitators on the streeets of Srinagar and other towns of Kashmir valley are young teenagers, most of them born in the turbulent 90’s, when things first spiralled out of control in Kashmir. Young in age, they are surprisingly articulate, and rather disturbingly for Indian authorities, have a simple single-point agenda – they want azadi (independence), independence from India.

These boys haven’t seen normal life for as long as they have lived. “They have not known what a beautiful place Kashmir once used to be,” says a sad Shazia Sheikh, who works for an NGO which works with women and children who have been displaced because of violence in Kashmir.

She said: “Caught in the vortex of violence they have lost their innocence, their youth. You might think they are brave or fearless. In reality their life is an unmitigated tragedy.”

On a day when the curfew was eased and we finished early with our work, I went on a drive through Srinagar with a young, very bright Kashmiri journalist. He said : “Srinagar is like a war zone, like Palestine and Lebanon.” As we drove through a long street of closed shops, with groups of young men sitting at street corners, he said : “This is Gaza for us. On this street there have been many pitched battles between the local people and the security forces”. Little later as he took me on a tour of downtown Srinagar, he announced grandly, “Now you are in West Bank.”

Most observers in Kashmir draw a parallel between the separatist movement which grew in the valley in the early 90s with the current agitation. There is one significant difference though. In the 1990s, the movement was driven by the Hurriyat and militant elements in the valley.

There is a subtle but important shift in the ground situation now. Though the Huriyat leadership remains at the helm of the agitation, at the heart of the present unrest are thousands of young boys, angry determined teenagers who were born and have lived through most testing times. They are no strangers to night curfews, shoot-at-sight orders, or teargassing. They are fearless boys like Tahir Wani with a single-point agenda – azadi.

Thousands of miles away from the melting pot that is Kashmir, as political mandarins in New Delhi try to work out "a Kashmir solution”, few of them realise they have to contend with a changed demographic, a new, powerful phenomenon in the valley. The thirteen-year-old agitator, next door.