[Reader-list] Letter to Kashmiri Pandit Youth

[S. Jabbar]

Letter to the Kashmiri Pandit Youth - Arvind Gigoo - Published in The
Kashmir Times (26-May-'10)


My dear Kashmiri Pandit youths,

Shah Faesal from a remote village of the Kupwara district in Kashmir stood
first in the IAS examination conducted by the Union Public Service
Commission of India. He did MBBS from Kashmir. Mark the vision, self-
confidence  and dogged perseverance of the young boy. Mark the courage and
determination of his mother. She is the proud mother of a proud son.
Militants killed her husband. Shah Faesal did proud to Kashmir by proving
his worth. He has taught the other boys and girls that it is not impossible
or even difficult to compete in the highest civil services examination.
Besides him, Mir Umair, Showkat Parray and Rayees Bhat also did it. Arash
Deep Singh and Udham Dass from Jammu passed this examination. Priyanka Dhar
qualified for the Indian Revenue Services. Thrilling news for me! Brilliant!
Excellent! Glory to them!

This should set you thinking. Most of you are bright, intelligent and
hardworking. But you lack the vision and will to explore new paths. The
ambition imposed on you ends when you pass the engineering examination and
join reputed concerns and multi-national companies. Your borrowed dreams end
there. Thereafter, you start thinking of more and more of salaries, perks,
flats, cars and of going abroad to accumulate currency notes.

This is the sad story of your life.

Most of you can easily compete in the IFS, IAS and allied services
examinations. You have the ability. It is a question of determination, of
will and of the nerve to do. That is what the youths of Bihar do. Your
opinion of the Beharis is utterly wrong. Your inherited egotistical belief
that you belong to the most intelligent, highly educated and cultured
community is baseless and false. Erase this illusion from your minds.

Nobody has shown you the right way. You have no thinking of your own. You
don¹t know what it is to make a choice.

Seats for you in some engineering colleges were and are assured and
reserved. You get jobs in the prestigious companies that suck your blood.
Engineers! 

Your tragedy is that you don¹t read books. You suffer from total lack of
interest in learning and knowledge. You pride yourselves on computers and
internet. What do you read from there? Nothing! You are an ignorant lot. You
don¹t and can¹t adjust in the company of the educated and learned.

You have been told that you have a very rich philosophical background and
amazing cultural inheritance. But you know nothing. You are ignorant of
world politics, geography, history, literature, philosophy, sciences,
humanities, art, music, films, etc. You have nothing to boast of.

Society doesn¹t need engineers only. It needs journalists, media
personalities, PhDs, lawyers, judges, civil servants, bureaucrats, film
makers, professors, writers, ambassadors, interpreters, teachers,
entrepreneurs, chartered accountants,pilots,artistsŠŠŠ..

Recall Shah Faesal, Mir Umair, Showkat Parray, Rayees Bhat, Arash Deep
Singh,Udham Dass  and Priyanka Dhar. Consider them your model and the source
of inspiration. They are the proud children of proud parents. Seek
inspiration from their dreams, from their will and from their ability to do.
Learn from them that you can also do and that you can also make it. Learn
from them that you can also be shapers of your own destiny. Learn from them
that you can also be.

You are lucky that migration happened when you were children or very young.
It is because of migration that you are where you are. It is because of
migration that you are what you are. I know that in some years you will be
important and Œbig¹ occupying high positions. ButŠŠbut i have my Œbut¹ and
my concern. 

Forget about migration and uprootedness. If you continue to talk about them
you will waste your entire lives. Leave these topics for the elderly and the
old. We have nothing else to do. Discussions on these topics are our
hobbies. They are our pastime. And we will perish with them.

Our ¹leaders ¹ have no work, no vision, no political acumen, no depth. They
don¹t have the time and inclination to address you, to talk to you and to
listen to you. 

You are our future, our hope, our soul. You have to carve places of honour
for yourselves. And for this you have to make your minds larger than life.
Think big and achieve whatever is big. Small minds think small. Come out of
parochialism and narrow outlook. It is only a man of culture who radiates
joy. In society he matters and lives.

If your philosophy of engineering continues our community will comprise
unintelligent, uneducated and maladjusted individuals chasing money only.

Political upheaval and social unrest create big personalities. But we have
failed. We failed to produce real men and women. We have no men and women of
substance amongst us. We have none worthwhile to show. We always seek
shelter in the word Œmigration¹.  Come out of it.

You are living in a bigger world where the English language helps. All of
you are good at spoken English. Cultivate writing skills. Basharat Peer,
Sameer Bhat, Mirza Wahid,  Rahul Pandita, Neeraj Santoshi, Siddhartha Gigoo
are young creative writers.

Your future is bright provided you explore new fields, new vistas and new
avenues. There are many. Go beyond. Toil and use your talent. You will touch
the skies. Dream large dreams. Finally those dreams will touch your feet.
Restless minds change the destinies of nations and of the societies. Rethink
about your lives. Go for self-introspection. Watch your size in the mirror.
Answer the acid questions: ³What am i ? Why am i ignorant?  What should i do
in order to prevail?² Passion, crises, restlessness and hard work will
change your lives. Be different. Please be different.



Ready-made engineering seats and tailor-made jobs are an insult to you now.
Twenty years is a long period of time. In the nineties reservation of seats
was a necessity. Otherwise the youth would have been shattered. Bal
Thackeray (we should have been thankful to him) came to their rescue.
Personally I have got nothing to do with his politics and ideology.

You don¹t go for higher education in the universities because ³my parents
want me to be an engineer. My ultimate goal is to get sixty-two percent
marks in class 12th examination².

If you don¹t take the first step (the first step is the change), if you
don¹t think on fresh and different lines you will be 12th   class pass
literate men and women ignorant of everything.

I beg you to rethink about the purpose of your lives. I beg you to respect
the Œyou¹ in you. I beg you to elevate yourselves intellectually,
spiritually and morally. I beg you to give to India the best you can offer.

Before i close i have one request to make:

Recall Shah Faesal, Mir Umair, Showkat Parray, Rayees Bhat, Arash Deep
Singh,Udham Dass and Priyanka Dhar. Consider them your model and the source
of inspiration. They are the proud children of proud parents. Seek
inspiration from their dreams, from their will and from their ability to do.
Learn from them that you can also do and that you can also make it. Learn
from them that you can also be shapers of your own destiny. Learn from them
that you can also be.

Yours always, 

Arvind Gigoo 
e-mail : arvindgigoo00 at gmail.com

PS: You are free to write to me and correct me.

(Arvind Gigoo, a retired professor of English, is the author of 'The Ugly
Kashmiri' published by Allied Publishers, New Delhi).