J K News Today Commentary
The manner in which the situation was handled in Jammu and Kashmir and Uttar Pradesh in the aftermath of the killing of an erstwhile Aligarh Muslim University Ph. D. scholar Manan Bashir Wani turned militant in an encounter on October 11 showed that there is a woeful absence of a strategy to deal with such situations.
Wani was a scholar was his past. And that he was a militant that was his present . There were consequences of what happened to him on October 11 when security forces zeroed in on a militant hideout in a village in north Kashmir’s Handwara district . They were not looking for a scholar , instead they were hunting for militants and Manan Wani happened to be one of them. Why did he chose to become a militant calls for a case study of different nature . By any stretch of imagination , it should not be linked to his fate that inevitably falls on all militants .
Aligarh Muslim University students hailing from Kashmir held a condolence meeting and raised anti-national slogans . This has greater dangers embedded in it , for this sets a wrong precedent for the universities and other educational institutions in the learning . If they were mourning the death of a scholar , it should have been clear to them that he was not a scholar at the time of his killing in a gunfight . He lost his qualification as a scholar the day he picked up the gun to fight the Indian nation . The group “ Hizb-ul-Mujahadeen” that he joined after quitting his scholastic pursuits midway, is avowedly committed to fight the country in Kashmir . It is a designated terrorist group . In that sense the students who held a condolence meeting and raised anti-India slogans were justifying the act of their former colleague instead of having taken it as an outcome for all those who choose the path of violence . That is where the real fault line exists .
Kashmiri politicians support to Manan Wani , particularly more pronounced by former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti , promoted a phenomenon of terrorism by describing Manan Wani as a victim of relentless violence . The usage of this phrase smacks of the political opportunism where she seems to have given up all the pretensions of being an anti-terror voice . If she thought that she would gain the support of the people by standing up and counted among the mourners for the terrorist and then cash it on during the elections , she should have realized that sailing in two boats is a best recipe for drowning in the whirlpool.
AMU authorities should have taken due notice of the violation of the law on the campus. The academic atmosphere cannot be maintained by glamourizing the terrorists . Is this what University is teaching .
The State Government should not have succumbed to any pressure and maintained its dignity by saying no to the intervention that the political leaders had sought.
