Building youth for the future
About Us | Contact Us | E-Paper
Title :    Text :    Source : 

Building youth for the future

Preventing the conflicts of tomorrow means changing the mindset of youth today

Post by on Wednesday, March 9, 2022

First slide

Kashmir a place I call home is nothing less than a paradise on earth where one can lay his soul bare. Kashmir has always been more than a just a mere place. It had been a land of mystics where one could have a spiritual experience, or reach a peaceful state of mind. As Jahangir versed, If there is paradise on earth it is here..it is here...it is here. But Kashmir has been engulfed in misery of terror and violence for the last thirty years. Due to Pakistan’s vicious strategy and conspiracy of spreading terrorism, the valley has witnessed immense devastation since 1990.

 

People of Kashmir became victims to this vicious Pakistani backed cycle of violence and terror. Unfortunately the younger generation of Kashmir was manipulated for laying down their lives in the name of Jihad. The term has often been misinterpreted. It rather needs to be understood from a universal humane perspective and its philosophical moral is to be taken into consideration for greater human and social welfare. The youth are brainwashed under the concocted religious interpretations and many social media platforms are now widely used to influence and incite young minds towards this violent path so that the cycle of terror continues unabated.

 

Since centuries Kashmiris have practised the true essence of Islam, which was deep rooted in Sufism, where saints preached pluralism and tolerance to other religions. In 1988, secessionist leaders and Kashmiri youth crossed over the LOC to Pakistan occupied Jammu and Kashmir. Their Pakistani establishment provided them with training of arms and ammunition. After receiving training of weapons they returned to valley well prepared for an armed insurgency.  Militant organizations were used as a front to escalate terror attacks in the valley. They also succeeded in injecting communalism in Kashmir. A malevolent campaign against Kashmiri Pandits, which was a minority community, was launched by extremist forces. The entire community of Kashmiri Pandits which comprised of more than three lack fifty thousand families in the valley were forced to flee from their ancestral homeland. In this phase of militancy, the local Muslims who resisted these terrorist acts also bore the brunt of atrocities by the militants. There was also a massive propaganda drive run by some vested interests against the intrinsic Sufi Islam and the composite Kashmiri culture and both were dubbed as anti-Islamic.

 

Nowadays militants are radicalizing the youth of Kashmir by making them believe in the extremist ideology. It is fact that killing innocent people in the name of religion is the highest insult to the Almighty. Over the years, the separatist ideology and terrorism has converted Kashmir from heaven on earth, into the hell of terror. Many separatist leaders exploited the people of the UT and played with their sentiments and blood. If this cycle of terror continues then the day is not far when our whole future generation will get engulfed in the vicious cycle of death and destruction and nothing else will be left for them except pain, misery and bleak future. The need of the hour is to ponder over the prospect of future generation and guide them towards peace and development.

 

The true challenge before us is to replace this Pakistani backed narrative of death and destruction with true knowledge of harmony, peace and prosperity. We will have to reconstruct communal unity back in the UT especially in the valley which was brutally torn apart by false divisions of religion. The responsibility of every citizen and political leaders is to educate the youth of valley and discourage them from endorsing false narratives and guide them in the right direction so that peace will prevail in this entire region.  Thus it has become inevitable necessity to save Kashmir from destruction carried out by Pakistan led terrorism policy.

 

Preventing the conflicts of tomorrow means changing the mindset of youth today. The foundation of every state is to educate its youth to build a peaceful future. We cannot always build the future for our youth but we can build our youth for the future.

 

(The Author is Student of Law, University of Kashmir. Twitter id: Themahi_na)

Latest Post