Author: Pradeep Dutta
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: July 28, 2002
URL: http://www.indian-express.com/archive_full_story.php?content_id=6689
Introduction: There are two kinds
of child victims of the J&K violence: The ones who survived. And the
ones who didn't
It's unlikely Bollywood director
Vidhu Vinod Chopra has heard of Vinod Kumar Dhar. But unknowingly, he recreated
the 16- year-old's life when he told the story of Altaf (portrayed by Hrithik
Roshan) in Mission Kashmir. Like the fictional Altaf, Vinod witnessed his
entire family - his parents, two sisters, brother, aunt and uncle - being
killed by four foreign militants.
It was the night of January 25,
1998, when they came to massacre 23 Kashmiri Pandits in Wandhama, a tiny
hamlet in the Ganderbal area of the Valley. ''As soon as I heard the first
burst of Kalashnikov fire, I went and hid behind a pile of dried cowdung,
stored for fuel. From there, I saw them spraying bullets on all my family
members, even a three- year-old child. But more than anything else, I hold
myself responsible for my elder brother's death. He had been sleeping,
I woke him up and he rushed downstairs, only to be killed. If I hadn't
told him, he could have been alive today.''
The tears dried up a while ago,
but the memories are vivid enough for Vinod to rip apart a fingernail while
reliving the tragedy for this reporter. A teacher rushes to bandage the
finger, but Vinod only says, ''This pain is nothing compared to the pain
I live with.''
Vinod also lives with psychological
trauma that may not even have been begun to be diagnosed. After the massacre,
says Nancy Saroop, Vinod's class teacher in the Jammu school where Vinod
now studies in class XI, relatives that had no connection with the family
tried to cosy up with the sole survivor in hope of garnering the compensation.
''Ever since, he doesn't trust over-friendly people,'' she adds.
One fear that is eating up Vinod
is the question of his future. ''Where will I go when I leave the hostel
after class XII?'' he wonders. ''I have no home, no one to call my own.''
Vinod may have been the only survivor
of the Wandhama massacre, but the unceasing violence of the last few years
ensures he is not a rarity in the state. Almost a fortnight after the Rajiv
Nagar incident, for instance, the two schools attended by 600 children
of the slums continue to be deserted.
''The moment I enter the classroom,
my eyes are drawn to the desk where my friend Chandni had scratched her
name with a knife,'' says her friend Aarti. ''She died before my eyes on
July 13. How can I go back there?''
Eight-year-old Amit has other worries.
His grandmother, Srishta Devi, is alive and well, but Amit is traumatised
by the possibilities of her death. ''My parents fell to the killer bullets
in Rajiv Nagar. If anything happens to my grandmother, who will take care
of us?'' he asks.
Heart-rending questions, but they
are not limited to Rajiv Nagar. The Kaluchak massacre, too, snatched away
smiles from the faces of scores of children. Dr Jagdish Thapa, an assistant
professor of psychiatry who is treating the affected children of the Kaluchak
Army Unit, says the condition is called 'psychomotor retardation'. The
symptoms are tiredness, depression, even a slow manner of talking.
''Immediately after the May 14 incident,
the children did not want to go back to school. They complained of missing
their friends. Now, after two months of counselling, they seem to be returning
to normal,'' says Dr Thapa.
The same can't be said of three-year-old
Nusrat, who does not have access to the same kind of care as the Kaluchak
kids. In March, the militants killed her entire family. Now, the only question
she has for her uncle is the meaning of mukhbir. ''It's because the militants,
before killing her father, said that he deserved to die because he was
a mukhbir (informer). My brother begged for his life, but they killed him
anyway,'' says her uncle.
Most experts agree that the debate
on Kashmir, whether in India or abroad, has centred on state and security.
''The colossal human tragedy, especially the impact on widows and orphans,
remains untouched,'' points out Jammu-based sociologist K S Subramanian.
That is not to say that children
have not been directly targeted. In fact, the past five months have seen
65 children lose their lives, the highest such figure for the 10 years
of violence. Ask Mithu Ram of Narla village in Rajouri. Militants dressed
in Pathani suits and speaking Gojri attacked two Hindu families, including
his, on Sunday night. ''Aaj to baad tere bachhe nahin darenge,'' they told
him before killing his two daughters, aged eight and 12, and two other
family members. The words will haunt him for the rest of his life.
The tone was set in January itself,
when eight children were killed by the Lashkar-e-Toiba in Mendhar tehsil
of Poonch district. Earlier, militants killed a child in the Gool Heights
of Udhampur district when he embraced his father, a village sarpanch, to
protect him from fire.
''The violence has directly and
indirectly affected the psychology of children,'' says Balraj Puri, head
of a UNICEF team researching the impact of armed conflict on children.
It has also sent many women and children to psychiatric hospital, besides
causing critical injuries to 13,868 civilians, including 800-odd children.
