Hilal Ahmad Dar, who was pursuing PhD at Kashmir University, is the fourth scholar to join militancy in Kashmir in recent years.
Police confirmed that Dar, who had gone missing according to his family and friends from Naranag (Wangat) in Ganderbal district area during a trekking and picnic outing since June 14, has joined militant ranks.
He is the second scholar from Kashmir University in the last two years to have chosen the path of violence. Earlier in April 2018, Mohammad Rafi Bhat from the same University joined Hizbul Mujahideen. However, his romance with the militancy lasted just 36 hours as he was killed in an encounter with security forces just a day after his joining.
Before him, Manan Wani, a research scholar at Department of Geology, Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), became a new sensation among militancy circles in Kashmir after he joined the Hizbul in January 2018. However, he too was killed in an encounter later that year in October.
Days after Wani’s killing another research scholar-turned-militant, Sabzar Sofi was consumed in the unmitigated violence in Kashmir.
The latest joining of Hilal Dar, a resident of Bemina suburb of Srinagar, once again casts a renewed spotlight on the trend of more well-educated youth joining militancy. As the recent gunfights in Srinagar city underline, a phenomenon that seemed to have been largely confined to south Kashmir is now radiating out to Srinagar city.
The trend is also creeping up the social ladder with youths who are highly educated and belong to affluent and apparently insulated families also taking the plunge. Dar’s transition from academia to insurgency is part of a troubling trend.
Though today’s militancy in Kashmir is smaller and less deadly than at the insurgency’s peak in the 1990s and early 2000s, militants have been using social media to “glamorise gun culture.”
Umair Gul, a doctoral student who has studied the history of the insurgency in Kashmir, says that educated Kashmiris have long been present among the militants. “But thanks to social media, such examples are gaining new prominence and serving as a recruitment tool,” he said.
A senior police officer said the lure of militancy for educated local youths is a new “cause of worry.”
“Militants use social media to glamorise gun culture and events elsewhere in India or around the world now reverberate in Kashmir, feeding a sense among well-educated youth that they are under attack,” he said.
Those who know Dar expressed shock that he turned to militancy, but, ultimately, they were not surprised at his motives. “In Kashmir, anything is possible. It is a conflict zone and it can influence anybody,” said a scholar at the varsity, wishing anonymity.
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