Arun Joshi

Why Kashmiri youth is turning to militancy even now when the pandemic of novel coronavirus has hit the Valley hard.

“A complete sense of hopelessness and nothing to look forward to,” said a seasoned observer of militancy in different parts of the country. This captures the mindset of the youths opting for militancy in the Valley.

Today, it is radically different environment than that of early 1990s when they used guns to secure the goal of “azadi”. Now, deepening helplessness is throwing them into militancy.

They are self-recruiting into militancy that close to mid-1990s had lost its self-assumed halo. Extortions, seeking girls for marriage and settling scores criminalised the militancy. It had a tag of stigma.

Now in these times of the virus that has killed more than 200 persons in the Valley, instead of fighting the virus, they are filled with a loss of hope that they seek redemption in militancy. It’s not true of all youths in the Valley, but a large number of them are weighed down by a sense of never-ending wait for hope.

That this is a dangerous situation is an understatement, as the number of those maintaining silence over their self-destructive plans is not known.

In 1990, the government had a proposal to create 10,000 jobs to eliminate militancy. The proposal never took off. Gradually, people lost hope in the system.

Religious, political leaders, medical experts and doctors have issued a series of appeals urging people not to venture out as that would be like courting death. And worse, everyone knows that there is a stigma attached to it as the people at large avoid meeting the families of the Covid-19 patients, but the militants dying in these times are accepted as a norm. There are condolences even if their bodies are buried far away from their homes or the graveyards in the neighbourhood.

This phenomenon needs a scientific and psychological analysis – stigma of contagious disease versus norm of silent militancy.