{"id":6929,"date":"2016-11-01T23:20:53","date_gmt":"2016-11-01T17:50:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kashmir.today\/?p=6929"},"modified":"2016-11-01T23:20:53","modified_gmt":"2016-11-01T17:50:53","slug":"dark-winter-ahead-valley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/?p=6929","title":{"rendered":"A DARK WINTER AHEAD FOR VALLEY"},"content":{"rendered":"
With the govt and Hurriyat not showing any signs of moving from their set position, senior journalist Bashir Manzar says the Valley is in for a bad time.<\/em><\/strong><\/h5>\n

It seems the government and the Hurriyat are in a race to deny our children education,\u2019\u2019 rued Bashir Manzar, editor of the Srinagar daily Kashmir Images. At a talk arranged by the Centre for the Study of Society and Secularism in Mumbai on Saturday, the senior journalist spoke despairingly about the closure of educational institutions and the burning of 25 schools in the Kashmir Valley, since Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani was killed by security forces on July 8.<\/em><\/p>\n

The entire Valley followed the weekly bandh calendar set by the Hurriyat, whose leader S A S Geelani had declared that it was unsafe for Kashmiri children to attend school. However, some parents\u2019 associations had met Geelani recently, said Manzar, as they didn\u2019t want their children to lose a year.<\/em><\/p>\n

Manzar blamed the government for \u201clack of compassion\u201d towards the people of Kashmir. Nearly 100 youngsters have died, mostly by pellet guns, and 3,000 injured in the protests that followed Wani\u2019s killing. \u201cYet, the government showed no remorse, not even an acknowledgement that it had used excessive force,\u201d said Manzar. \u201cYes, stones were thrown on the security forces, but can pellets, which blind and even kill, be the answer to stones and rocks?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Kashmiris were asking why no pellet guns were used against Jats in Haryana and Patels in Gujarat, whose protests had also been violent, added Manzar.<\/em><\/p>\n

According to Manzar, Wani\u2019s killing was the last straw for Kashmiris who had been seething ever since the PDPBJP alliance came to power in January 2015. As it is, for the last 20 years, there was anger that neither the State\u2019s Chief Secretary, nor the chief of police, had been a Kashmiri. But the December 2014 Assembly elections had been fought on only one slogan: \u201cKeep Narendra Modi out.\u201d That was why the PDP had received a massive mandate.<\/em><\/p>\n

When it allied with the BJP, said Manzar, Kashmiris felt betrayed and apprehensive that the RSS was now ruling them. A series of incidents: the refusal of BJP ministers to fly the Kashmiri flag on their official cars; their proposal to set up Sainik colonies knowing that no non-Kashmiri is allowed to buy land there; the challenge to Art 370 in the Delhi High Court; and finally the killing of a truck driver in Udhampur on the suspicion that he was transporting beef, had set the Valley on edge.<\/em><\/p>\n

Manzar recounted meeting an old man in Srinagar who was out on the streets with the young stone-pelters. \u201cWe have to fight, else the RSS will come and put tikas on our foreheads,\u201d the man explained to Manzar.<\/em><\/p>\n

But Manzar was also critical of the Hurriyat. With everything closed for three months, fatigue had started setting in, and people had started moving out for work a few weeks back. However, two auto rickshaws and two taxis were burnt for defying the bandh. \u201cThere was no condemnation of this by Geelani,\u201d pointed out Manzar. \u201cHis silence validated this violence against people who simply wanted to go back to earning their livelihood.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

With winter round the corner, and the shifting of the capital to Jammu, MAnzar felt the Valley was in for a bad time. Every section was struggling to make ends meet: be it fruit traders, shopkeepers or shikara owners. But neither the government nor the Hurriyat showed any signs of moving from their set positions. It was obvious that the government wanted to tire the protesters out, said Manzar; but the Hurriyat seemed to have no new strategy to keep the movement going.<\/em><\/p>\n

Manzar traced the alienation of Kashmiris to 1953, when Kashmir\u2019s Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah was put into prison for 11 years. Since then, the only Prime Minister to have reached out to Kashmiris was Atal Bihari Vajpayee, he said. \u201cIn his first public meeting in Srinagar he acknowledged that Kashmiris had been wronged; that democracy had never reached us. And he declared his willingness to talk to Pakistan.\u201d (Mumbai Mirror)<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the govt and Hurriyat not showing any signs of moving from their set position, senior journalist Bashir Manzar says the Valley is in for a bad time. It seems the government and the Hurriyat are in a race to deny our children education,\u2019\u2019 rued Bashir Manzar, editor of the Srinagar daily Kashmir Images. At […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6930,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-union-territory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6929\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}