PHD scholar turns militant, justifies his choice in letter
SRINAGAR: A PHD scholar turned militant, Mannan Wani has come out for the first time to write about why he chose to join militancy in Kashmir.
Wani, 26, a research student of Applied Geology, had gone missing in January from Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) only to appear in pictures on social media holding a grenade launcher.
In a letter mailed to a local news agency on Monday, Wani described himself as the former PHD scholar from AMU and currently member of Hizbul Mujahideen.
Local news agency CNS, to which the letter was mailed and had uploaded it on their website, later took it down. The letter went viral on social media.
Throughout the letter, Wani talks about “occupation” by India and how it is “manufacturing narratives” and “circulating new discourses” to justify its “military presence and oppressive measures to contain the populace of Jammu and Kashmir”.
“Our mission is to liberate our land from foreign illegal occupation and thus to create an environment of peace and justice wherein every thought and ideology would be discussed and debated and people will be given their right to chose whatever they like,” he says.
Wani quotes Malcolm X in the letter and responds to a bureaucrat and a politician, without naming them, for their justifications to propagate India’s cause and against death.
“We are soldiers. We don’t fight to die but to win, we don’t feel dignity in death, but we do feel dignity in fighting (Indian) occupation, its military might, its oppression, its tyranny, its collaborators and most of all its ego and if/when we die while fighting all this, we do feel dignity in that death,” Wani says in the letter stretching to over 3000 words.
The letter comes few days after militants released a group photo of 14 young men holding guns somewhere in an orchard or a forest.
Wani takes exception to those who call people “fighting occupation” as “fanatics, fundamentalists and terrorists”. He goes on to take the definition of a terrorist from NCERT text book as the “one who targets civilians indiscriminately to get their demands fulfilled”.
“Unlike India we don’t kill civilians (Kashmiris or Indian) and non combatants (not part of occupation). Those calling us terrorists should either change their textbooks or their rhetoric ,” he then claims.
He also dwells into the religious aspect of their struggle and states how “people of India are being taught that Kashmiri militants are brainwashed young boys who join militancy for 72 virgins”.
Director General of Police, J&K, Shesh Paul Vaid said he did not want to react over the letter. When asked that militants have also released a group photo, Vaid said: “We will deal with them. If you pick up gun you are taking to violence, it has to be dealt under law.”
Wani’s joining militancy had created quite a flutter in the Valley and outside. Following his joining, a Kashmir University teacher Mohammad Rafi Bhat , a PHD in sociology, was killed in a gunfight with security forces just a day after joining in May.