Suspended for 'sedition', Kashmiri students refuse Pak scholarships

The Pakistan government’s offer to 67 Kashmiri students suspended by the Swami Vivekanand Subharti University in Meerut to seek admission in any Pakistani university has found few takers in Kashmir, even though the suspended students are demanding that their admissions be transferred from the private university in Meerut to some other university.

Following the sedition case slapped against the students and their suspension for cheering Pakistan in an Asia cup match (the sedition case was later withdrawn) a spokesperson for Pakistan’s Foreign Office had said on Thursday in Islamabad that they would welcome the suspended students to their universities.

“Our hearts and educational institutions are open for all Kashmiri students who were suspended and charged with sedition for celebrating Pakistan’s victory,” the spokesperson had said.

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The display of opportunism was not limited to across the border.

Back in Kashmir, sensing political trouble, and deep public outrage, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah called his counterpart in Uttar Pradesh to intervene. The Uttar Pradesh government dropped the sedition charges, although the suspension of the students continues.

However, even before the sedition charges were dropped, the expelled students found support from several organisations based in Pakistan, including the militant organisation Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a banned outfit, which also announced a scholarship for the students to study anywhere in the world.

The students, however, appeared disinclined.

The majority of the students Firstpost spoke to on Friday reacted cautiously to the announcement by the Pakistan foreign office. Not only did they say they would not be taking up the offer, but they also said they were more keen to see a change in the attitude of Indians and an end to the discrimination meted out to them on the basis of their political identity.

“We are being called terrorists in that university whenever a blast happens in Pakistan, they tell us that look what is happening in your country. If we are Indian citizens and Kashmir is an integral part of India why do they call us Pakistanis?” Saqib Manzoor, a student of B Tech and one of the recipients of the Prime Ministers Scholarship, said.

Another student said he was bitter about the experience – the scholarship was meant to build bridges between Kashmiris and those from the mainstream, but instead the students had come back with memories of teachers and an education system better than one they can expect in Kashmir but with no avenue to continue their education there.

In Kashmir, politics has taken centrestage over the issue. Separatists are protesting against the suspension saying the move has ‘punctured’ the tall claims of democracy and secularism, and mainstream political parties want to keep the issue alive for the electoral gains in approaching elections.

When India opened its economy in the early nineties, students from other parts of country started looking West for better education. It was during the same time that the insurgency erupted in the Kashmir Valley and worried parents, who wanted to save their children from conflict, chose other Indian cities for their children’s education. Most of those students ended up in universities in Uttar Pradesh, Bangalore, Pune and other Indian cities. Although Delhi offered better education, comparatively, a section of politically conscious Kashmiri students avoided it fearing the city’s police force which is notorious in Kashmir for branding Kashmiri students as militants.

Educational infrastructure and quality of imparting education remain poor in the Valley, and especially after emergence of militancy. A recent report by the Comptroller & Auditor General of India (CAG) pulled up Kashmir University (KU), the face of education in Kashmir Valley, for overlooking its own rules and regulations. Its scholarly output, according to educationists, is pathetic and its system of education backward.

That is also one of the reason lakhs of Kashmiri students every year chose universities in small towns of India outside Kashmir. It is there the government of India, by providing scholarships to Kashmir students, wanted to build bridges. These campuses were foreseen as the harbinger of change among the new generation of Kashmiri students, but this experience would be seen as a setback to that process.

Meanwhile, support for the Pakistani cricket team is nothing new in Kashmir. The truth is that in many Kashmiri households, if India plays Kenya, they will celebrate a Kenyan win. It is seen as another way of expressing anger against the Indian state, a reflection of an unresolved political struggle running through decades of conflict.

Late in November 2011, a court in Srinagar acquitted 12 men, 28 years after they were accused of digging a pitch at the first International match held at the Bakhsi Stadium in Srinagar. It was an India Vs West Indies tie, in 1983. The 12 Kashmiris were accused of attacking the pitch during the lunch break.

The match became a legend in Kashmir, the home side booed by supporters of the separatists and eventually losing the game.

The authorities in Meerut might have thought it fit to send the Kashmiri students back home to avert any possibility of clashes between the two groups but unfortunately, it has once again widened the gulf that the architects of the Prime Minister’s Scholarship Scheme were so keen to bridge.