CRPF jawans kicked and abused in Kashmir, where are the progressive voices?

Kashmir, Major Gaurav Arya, CRPF Jawans, Kashmir India, Virender Sehwag ,Gautam Gambhir

CRPF jawans abused and kicked, you must have read something like this somewhere.

But did you notice that the protests against this assault in the ‘progressive’ sections are almost nil?

Perhaps CRPF Jawans feature much lower than the rowdy student leaders, who like to chant azaadi as part of their morning-to-night rituals, on the radar of progressive voices.

Bhavesh Chaudhary, who is the spokesman for the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in Srinagar, on Wednesday said that the paramilitary forces work with the highest restraint in sensitive areas such as the J&K.

Further, he said that “When someone slaps you, the instant reaction would be retaliation but see how our jawans stay patient despite being armed.”

This incident took place on 9th April 2017, and yet we find that the outrage is mostly muted.

Isn’t this intolerance towards the men, who volunteer to serve the nation, and her citizens, are randomly attacked, abused and humiliated like this?

Where are the champions of Kashmiriyat who never cease to lecture the rest of India on secularism and human rights? The same secularism and human rights which are routinely denied to the Kashmiri minorities in Kashmir? Do they not see that these CRPF jawans too are someone’s family and deserve human rights as well if not for the sake of human rights then at least for the sake of Kashmiriyat? Or did we get the concept of Kashmiriyat wrong all along?

Let’s ask ourselves, will those who attacked the CRPF jawans be willing to be treated in the same fashion?

What you will be seeing in this video are not angry men but abusive men who are attacking peaceful personnel for doing their job and returning calmly while being humiliated.

What you will see in this video is how easy it is for the irresponsible people in this nation to attack those who, like the Atlas, bear the burden of their security at a great personal loss.

Every Kashmiri must ask, will these ‘youth’ ever be a productive part of the Kashmiri society?

Please don’t say that CRPF jawans are ‘paid’ to bear all this. Bearing abuse is never a part of any ‘job description’ in any part of the civilized world.

Normalizing this abuse is akin to creating bhasmasurs which would be too much for an aspiring India to contain.

CRPF Jawans ‘exercise restraint’ merely because Kashmiris are not the outsiders for them but are just Indians like the rest of us. Don’t forget that they had weapons with them, but chose to not use them against the hooligans.

But for a moment can you imagine the outrage if they would have returned the favour in kind? How do you think that the sections of ‘intelligentsia’ would have reacted then?

We must look closely, see who from the progressive sections will smell the coffee and speak up for these men who must have been left traumatized after this humiliation.

We must watch out for those who will champion their human rights with as much passion as they do for captured terrorists.

Sorry to say, but successive Indian governments have failed by and large in sensitizing the public on the grave threat that the Jawans work in. But now, at least with social media, we know why the use of pellet guns was necessary.

Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir just spoke for the rest of us when they said:

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Plan of action ahead?

The government of the state and the center needs to stop covering up the crimes of the ‘misguided youth.’

The message should be loud and clear:

If you are old enough to vote and old enough to abuse, then you should be old enough to face the consequences.

It is high time that the human rights of the Indian jawans be given equal consideration. Enough of foolish and naive propaganda which glorifies the ‘misguided youth’ and puts the men in uniform below them when it comes to human rights. Let India debate on this.

By Namta Gupta