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“You dare…”

Obituaries are not what martyrdoms are for…

Here is a defence for the cause…

I could do only one thing in the days that followed April 20th- weep…! I wept over each and every moment of life I had enjoyed with two of my close friends - Asiya and Khurram… While Asiya Jeelani was taken away from us by the IED attack on the Sumo they were traveling in, Khurram Parvez was critically wounded. I sobbed recollecting every discussion we had - about life, activism, journalism, Islam and ofcourse Jihad - pleasant as well as heated. I wept remembering the kind of questions these two used to pose to me during the times we spent together in the four walls of the CCS office in Srinagar and in Delhi. I cried when I saw Khurram, who was amputated upon…

April 20th, horror strikes: Our Election Observation work (part-2, after the 2002 Assembly Elections) was going to start on that fateful day. Having opted out of the first two phases’ work, due mainly to financial difficulties and others, I was sitting in my office in Delhi. On a pleasant day, I was trying to coordinate the arrangements for the people doing the the Election Observation work for the last two phases of elections in J&K.

It was not long before I got a call from a friend… A regular number, as was recognizable in the mobile, I picked up the call addressing her. There was no voice reaching me from the other end. Suddenly a hello… the trembling voice went on to tell me: “Vijayan, our election observation team’s vehicle has been blown up”, she sighed. All the faces that were participating in that phase of election-monitoring flashed through my mind. ‘Who’ was the question. Parvez, Gautam, Zaheer, Kumar, Bashir, Sajjad… who? She continued: “we have lost Asiya and our driver;...and Khurram and a volunteer are critically injured. It was an IED”. The voice went on to tell me lot more, but my ears had stopped listening. Suddenly some of the mine blasts I had known, came to my mind. The shattered body of the militant at Doda, the two jawans who got blown up at Jammu… I couldn’t imagine the pain my friends were going through, pools of blood all around, at the heights of helplessness...!

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For all those who have been closely following the civil society groups in Jammu & Kashmir and their involvements for human rights and dignity of the people, the growth of a new youth group - around the ‘J&K Coalition of Civil Society’ was of much interest. This group, nurtured from some independent thinkers from the Kashmir University students’ community, showed its best potential during the 2002 Assembly Election Observers’ work in the valley. Volunteers filled with enthusiasm and the cadres who actively debated different aspects of the peace-building process in the Kashmir imbroglio, were assets of the group hitherto unknown in this conflict-ridden society. It was nobody’s surprise when Khurram and Asiya became the respective ‘commanders’ for this human rights army.

I remember the day when Asiya asked me over a tensed conversation about human rights work: “how come you left your full-fledged media-related work, and decided to work as a human rights activist?” “what attracted you to this field?”… etc. A bit taken aback by her naivety, I tried answering through a quote, which I have treasured: “You dare and your confidence and acts will prove your worth to the world - do what your heart tells you to, find satisfaction in the happiness of your people and believe in the religion called life”. A visibly impressed Asiya was busy taking them down in her diary!

Asiya’s commitment and ability to perform in a team saw her climbing the ladders of her career as a human rights activist and a strong woman writer. She became a writer, editor of ‘Voices Unheard’, a magazine published by APDP. She also took it on herself to do a variety of writing jobs for the collective of groups, including APDP, PCHR and JKCCS. The committed gender rights campaigner in her also fought consistently against any signs of patriarchal influence over the collective’s functioning.

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However, it will be wrong to portray Asiya only as a committed worker for the cause of Human Rights, Gender Justice and Peace. She was a humanist and one who valued her personal friendships and relationships. If not for her adoration for the work of individuals like Adv. Parvez Imroz and Parvina Ahangar and for her personal closeness to Khurram, she would not have worked with any of these groups and would not have been in that tragic journey to the interior areas of Kupwara.

Aftermath: After all those phone conversations had ended and all the moaning was controlled, the inevitable question began to haunt some of us. Many friends from different walks of life started asking those uneasy questions: “Was it a targeted attack?” and “who did it?”

I still am among those looking for those answers. In a war scenario, where human lives no more hold the worth and virtue, it is difficult to find answers to some of these questions. It is also difficult sometimes to distinguish between the perpetrators and the victims. But some of us could guess from the modus operandi, who must have committed this dastardly crime. But here we are, having lost a better one among us to an IED that didn’t have her name on it.

Last week, a friend called me from Srinagar and insisted that I write an obituary for Asiya… I agreed, and here I am, trying to scribble those lines about my better friends - including Khurram, who is still languishing in St.Stephen’s Hospital, Delhi, who has already braved 9 operations upon his ‘lost leg’. The sheer determination, with which this young friend has faced his life since ‘rebirth’ on 20th April, has been a source of hope and inspiration for many of us.

Now, I realize that for brave hearts like Asiya, who actually ‘dared’, it is better that we write obituaries with our lives and not our pens or keyboards!

Vijayan MJ June 2004

Civil Society Initiatives

The Other Media, Delhi