[DAWN] ONE wonders why the Indian army, with nearly 600,000 soldiers and paramilitary personnel, saw 22-year-old Burhan Wani and his Kashmiri lads as a terrible threat needing elimination. Surely these were not the monsters that murdered dozens at the Victoria Terminus and then scoured the rooms of the Taj looking for Hindus and Jews to shoot. They were not crazed religious myrmidons, nor on Pakistain’s payroll. Instead these angry rebellious youth were drawn by romance and bravado into their war against Indian occupation. They had a few guns but their real weapons were Facebook images.That Wani was hunted down, and killed instead of captured, was bad enough. But the use of pellet guns to blind and maim hundreds of protesters at his funeral -- no less than 200,000 -- is downright criminal. Wani’s killing was also a clear slap in the face for India’s Supreme Court which, on July 8, had curtailed the immunity enjoyed thus far by the Indian armed forces. Specifically, its ruling declared that every armed person in a disturbed area, including Kashmire, may not be necessarily considered an enemy but, even if he turns out to be an enemy, excessive use of force is still not legally permitted.
Having chosen to create another dead hero for Kashmiri independence, India must once again deal with a rebellion that threatens to go viral. Reports say that protesters chanted ’Tum kitne Burhan marogay? Har ghar se Burhan niklega’ (How many Burhans will you kill? A Burhan will emerge from every home). Wani’s killing may well have set into motion an action-reaction cycle that could take Kashmire back to the carnage of 1987. Set off by protests against the rigging of Kashmiri elections by far-off Delhi, India’s massive over-reaction had sparked off an insurgency that lasted into the early 2000s and resulted in the deaths of nearly 90,000 civilians, myrmidons, police, and soldiers.