Author: Nina Martyris
Publication: The Times of India
Date: January 23, 2004
He could pass off for a European-six
feet plus, sandy haired, with the complexion of the mountains. His striped
trousers lend him a corporate air, but Firdous Syed, 37, is neither
European nor corporate, but a reformed Kashmiri terrorist who lived
underground for eight years as part of the militant movement, then at its
bloodiest. In 1996, a few years after a stint in jail, he came "overground"
as he puts it, a man disillusioned with the gun.
Last Saturday, Mr Syed and a host
of Kashmiri heavyweights including Prof Geelani, Sajjad Lone and santoor
maestro Bhajan Sopori, participated in a heated three-hour seminar organised
by the Kashmir Foundation for Peace and Development Studies,
as part of the World Social Forum.
The seminar was a discussion on
the ancient cultural and other linkages between Kashmiri
Muslims, Hindus, Dogras and Buddhists, a reiteration of
the forgotten fact that Kashmir has never been scarred by a communal riot.
Something which led Mahatma Gandhi to say that Kashmir was a ray of
hope in the darkness of Partition.
Cultural linkages is what Mr Syed
has immersed himself in-rebuilding that vital bridge between Pandits
and Muslims, a connection once unshakeable, now fractured with fear.
It was something of a shock when his son jumped at the sound of a Diwali
cracker mistaking it for a bomb, but more upsetting was the fact that many
children in Kashmir don't know the significance of Diwali because
it is hardly celebrated in the Valley any more. "Another child pointed
to a woman in a sari and asked her mother what the garment was," says Mr
Syed, to illustrate how the presence of the Kashmiri Hindu woman,
sari wearing as opposed to her salwar-kameez clad Muslim counterpart, is
almost invisible now.
Mr Syed, who has an academic turn
of phrase (he calls the Kashmir strife a 'serious psychological complexity
as opposed to a substantive political problem'), joined the militancy in
1989. He was the founder of the Muslim Janbaz Force, which grew to be the
second largest militant group operating in the state.
"We were the basics of the militant
movement, we began it. Yes, I went to Pakistan for training," he says,
matter-of-factly "No, it wasn't psychological training, because I
was already committed to the cause; it was more a logistical training."
Did he ever kidnap anyone? Mr Syed replies in the negative, but recalls
that while he was in jail his colleagues kidnapped two Swede engineers,
who they later released. Did he ever kW anyone? "No," he says. "I
don't think so. I wasn't in the frontline in that sense. My work was more
in the planning, the logistics."
By 1994, he says, he saw through
what he calls the "duality of Pakistan's claims". "Pakistan has been trying
to impress on. the ordinary Kashmiri that whatsoever they were doing
was for Kashmir. In fact, they were trying to settle scores using
Kashmir as the canon. We were among the first group of senior people who
came forward for dialogue."
For this they were called traitors.
"Friends and family shunned me," he recalls, "but things have changed
so much that we stand vindicated. In 1989, the movement was an indigenous
one. Today, how many militant outfits believe in the Kashmiri ethos? Most
militants are foreign elements, and even if they are Kashmiri
they are attached to foreign enterprises."
Like many reformed militants he
entered the political fray, and was elected to the legislative council
on a National Conference ticket in 1997. "But after 2001 I moved away from
active politics and these days I am committed to building dialogue
between Kashmiri Pandits and Kashmiri Muslims," he says. "As Sajjad said
at the seminar, it is a matter of great shame for every Kashmiri that the
Pandits have had to leave the valley"
