[Reader-list] A mother, a son and Kashmir's education tragedy

[Aditya Raj Kaul]

*A mother, a son and Kashmir's education tragedy *

*Praveen Swami*

*Link - http://www.hindu.com/2010/08/17/stories/2010081756841400.htm*

* Islamist radical Asiya Andrabi wants schools and colleges shut. Her son
wants a passport to study abroad *
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*

In June, some private schools briefly reopened, but shut down again after
Andrabi's warning

Secessionists have long insulated their children's education from the
troubled region's politics
*
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SRINAGAR: Last month, Kashmiri Islamist leader Asiya Andrabi lashed out at
parents worried about the consequences the weeks of violent street protests
she has spearheaded might have for their children.

“Losses of life, material and the education of children,” she said in a July
13 statement, “are inevitable in our freedom struggle. But these cannot be
reasons to make compromises. The material sacrifices made by students,
cart-pushers or daily-wage labourers have no value when compared to those
who are ready to make the supreme sacrifice for the cause of freedom.”

But documents filed in the Jammu and Kashmir High Court suggest that the
fugitive Dukhtaran-e-Millat leader's son does not want to be among the tens
of thousands of school and college students who have been locked out of
educational institutions since June — or to join the ranks of those dying on
Srinagar's streets.

Petition for passport

In a petition filed before the Jammu and Kashmir High Court on April 30,
2010, Ms. Andrabi's teenage son Muhammad Bin Qasim had asked to be issued a
passport in order to pursue a college education abroad.

Filed on behalf on Mr. Qasim by a maternal uncle, since he was then a minor,
the petition says the teenager has “applied for admission in Malaysia and
has indicted his first choice as Bachelor of Information Technology and
second one as Bachelor of Laws [sic.].”

June, 1992-born Qasim, documents filed in court show, applied for an Indian
passport on March 2, 2010. He applied for admission to a university abroad
after obtaining 553 out of a possible 750 marks in his final year school
examinations last year

However, the Jammu and Kashmir Police, which verifies the antecedents of
passport applicants, claims the 18-year-old could be a threat to the state's
security. In a May 24, 2010 response to Qasim's application, senior
additional advocate-general A.M. Magray has stated that the teenager may be
“misused” by his anti-India family if allowed to travel abroad.

The Jammu and Kashmir government's affidavit relies on the fact that several
of Qasim's relatives have been key figures in the State's anti-India
movement. His father, Ashiq Husain Faktoo, a former member of the terrorist
group Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen, is serving a life sentence for the 1992 murder
of human rights activist H.N. Wanchoo. Inayatullah Andrabi, another of
Qasim's uncles, was a founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami's student wing, the
Islami Jamaat-e-Tulaba. Qasim, then just three, had himself spent 13 months
in prison along with his parents after their arrest in 1993.

Ms. Andrabi's inflammatory polemic has given an increasingly ugly shape to
the protests in Kashmir. Earlier this month, she condemned representatives
of religious minorities who met with Tehreek-i-Hurriyat chief Syed Ali Shah
Geelani to voice their concern at communal strains in the ongoing
mobilisation. “Minorities can ask for security from the majority only after
we get freedom from India,” she said. Ms. Andrabi also claimed, without
basis, that Hindu fundamentalists in Jammu had “burned alive a number of
Kashmiri Muslim drivers”.

But there is nothing to show that Qasim is involved in his parents'
politics. Last summer, Ms. Andrabi dragged her son home from Jammu, after
learning he had been selected to play in a national-level cricket
tournament. “How,” Ms. Andrabi had told the media, “can I let him play for
India? My son will never serve a country that is our enemy. It is just
impossible.”

“I was playing,” Qasim responded in an interview, “for Kashmir. Cricket is
my passion. After Islam and my parents, cricket is everything for me. I just
wanted to play at least one national-level match in my life.”

Bleak future

Hundreds of Kashmir families have been exploring educational opportunities
outside the region. Schools and universities have been shut since early this
summer, when protests on Srinagar's streets began to escalate. In June, some
privately-run schools briefly reopened — but shut down again after Ms.
Andrabi warned that she would not be responsible for the consequences.
Educational institutions in Jammu have since reported a surge in
applications.

Kashmir's élite, including anti-India secessionists, have long insulated
their children's education from the troubled region's politics. Incarcerated
Islamist leader and lawyer Mian Abdul Qayoom, for example, sent one of his
three daughters to study medicine in Darbhanga. His nephew is a
ninth-semester student at the Dogra Law College in Jammu — a privately owned
institution owned, perhaps ironically, by local Congress leader Gulchain
Singh Charak. Two other nephews, and a niece, obtained degrees in law and
science from Pune.

The unfortunate ones

“The élite of our society,” journalist Manzoor Anjum wrote in an editorial
commentary in the Urdu-language newspaper Uqab last month, “had already sent
their children outside Kashmir for the pursuit of education, and those who
had not done so earlier are doing so now. But the people who cannot afford
to do so, who are in the majority, are caught between the devil and the deep
sea. The bleak future of their children stares them in the face.”


-- 
Aditya Raj Kaul

India Editor
The Indian, Australia

Cell -  +91-9873297834
Web: http://activistsdiary.blogspot.com/