Srinagar: Congratulating the students o 10th standard on passing exams, Hurriyat Conference (G) Chairman, Syed Ali Geelani praised “resilient youth and their families for successfully qualifying the examinations”.
“I and the entire society is proud of this achievement despite everyday violence perpetrated against our people especially youth. The success of our youth becomes extraordinary in these extraordinary times we live in amidst massive killings, maiming and blinding, crackdown and torture,” Geelani said in a statement issued here.
“Through your hard work, dedication and diligence, you have proved that Kashmir’s future is progressing towards an undeniable destiny of freedom,” he said.
The pro-freedom leaders said that success of youth has further reinforced the narrative of resistance that “education and freedom struggle are intertwined.”
“It has demolished the discourse and vilifying campaign of the Indian state, their apologists and collaborators that the resistance of the people of Kashmir is driven by ‘misguided youth’”, he said.
The octogenarian leader further said: “I take this opportunity to reflect, and to remind our youth on certain critical challenges that Kashmir and our people are facing for the last seven decades, and more so in last several years. The on-going oppression of the Indian state is more than just physical, psychological or spiritual and India continues its onslaught on our society at all levels of our appeal to reason and emotions.”
It is thus not surprising, he said, that education itself has become a site of both “oppression and resistance in our struggle for freedom.”
“Our students, educational institutions and centers of critical learning are facing an aggressive assault, which not only seeks to tame us as a community but also aims to produce docile and subservient citizens for the Indian state,” he said, adding, “Occupation and injustice thrives on ignorance. Resistance and fight for justice, on the other hand, flourishes purely through education and critical learning of the political and social awareness and for that Islam remains at the core of our struggle and philosophy.”
The pro-freedom leader said that education ensures that an individual becomes self-aware, which is crucial for him to break the shackles of slavery and subservience.
“This is true of our pious and rightful struggle as well. Our educated and conscious young people are taking up the cause of resistance,” he said, adding, “This is not a new phenomenon though, as being propagated by the Indian vassals. Kashmir’s struggle for its freedom has thrived only through the sacrifices of brilliant men and women who have for decades espoused, fought and martyred for this just cause.”
He said resistance will only endure if the struggle against suppression brings empathy, compassion and emotional labour among those who are striving or facing oppression, regardless of one’s religion, gender, class or geography.
“This realization of mutual empathy and appreciation of the struggles is, however, not possible without critical learning and reasoning, which can only be attained through education,” he said.
The Hurriyat chairman said that the resistance movement was also inseparable from the discussions about understanding the community’s ideals, building on those principles and their realization in action. “As such, our youth must always remember that education is integral to our resistance.”
