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FEBRUARY 5, 2001 VOL. 157 NO. 5
Personal Testament
A young life lost to the struggle
By MEENAKSHI GANGULY
ALSO
In the Line of Fire
After decades of conflict, thousands of sons murdered and a long-standing drought of hope in the disputed region, India and Pakistan are starting a hesitant peace process
Militant School: An exclusive look inside the training camps that mold young men into guerrilla martyrs for Islam
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ALSO
IN TIME |
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There was a boy in Kashmir who befriended me. He followed me about, offering to show me the sights, find me a houseboat, take me shopping. Irritated, I asked for a militant. It was worth a shot. In the old days, the "boys"—Kashmiri freedom fighters—would seek out journalists. All you had to do was spread the word that you were around. The militants in the early 1990s were idealistic and nationalistic. They wanted you to believe they were peaceful people who had been forced into violence because of injustices they had faced from India. But those boys are now gone: surrendered, jailed or killed, or fled to Pakistan. Now the war is being managed by mysterious mehmans, or guests from distant and violent places, determined to wrench Muslim land from the hold of Hindus. They call this a religious war. A jihad.
I grew to like the kid. He was a widow's only son, just 20 and too scared of his mother's wrath to embark on the gun-and-death lifestyle that many of his friends had chosen. But he was tempted. "In the end everyone will have to answer to Allah and they will have to explain what they did for their religion," he explained. "I don't want to be left with nothing to say."
Over the past 12 years more than 30,000 people—soldiers, civilians, rebels, militants, terrorists—have died in Kashmir. Why? I asked a sad, tired father in Gandherbal, 30 km from Srinagar, whose son had disappeared one night to go to Pakistan and never returned. What did you talk about at meals 20 years ago, I asked him? Did you discuss freedom and armed struggle? I managed to draw a smile. He said they had talked about college education, perhaps getting a doctor in the family. "No son asked his father before he joined," he sighed. "How do I know who talked to him, what they said? But every house has a lost son."
I heard the tale of another boy martyr from friends in the Kashmiri police. He was a teen from Sialkot, in Pakistan's Kashmir, who was enamored of Shahrukh Khan, an Indian matinee idol. Khan's latest movie was playing, but only across the border. So the teenager agreed to smuggle explosives into India to catch the show. He succeeded in his mission, and even saw the film. But leaving the theater, he got lost and was picked up by cops. They asked for a bribe; he obliged, handing over a 500 rupee note. Unfortunately, the note was counterfeit and the policemen tossed him into a jail cell. There, he told his true story. God knows what happened to him.
When I returned to Kashmir, my young friend had vanished. "He has gone to the other side," some said. Others assumed he was one of the "disappeared," meaning someone picked up for questioning by Indian security troops. In either case, he is probably dead. Back in the old days before he became a jihad warrior, he had also been a fan of the actor Shahrukh Khan. "Does Khan know how to use all those guns?" he once asked me. I had no idea, but I answered anyway. "Rubbish," I said. "Toys. All make believe." Whatever his fate, he surely found that guns are painfully real.
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