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This refers to, ‘Empower People Not Institutions’, by Fayaz Bhat in response to my write up, Army-Civilian Dichotomy, which appeared on April 11,published in a local daily paper(Rising Kashmir). Either the writer has just tried to see his name in the paper by throwing up a debate over nothing or resorted to brazen misreading of my point of view. My title, ‘army-civilian dichotomy itself speaks of the gulf between the two and why such a huge vacuum exists is known to everybody, but over exaggerated by the writer in his feedback. A mere repetition of past bitter events and over examplification does not make arguments reasonable, scientific and objective, which the writer should identify with. In his whole response to my piece he has just tried to examplify my urging and simple discourse in a layman’s language, which hardly can be treated as a scientific criticism. The writer amply needs to revisit my article to find benefiting answers to all his examples and statements. Some of the phrases used in my piece like, ‘dichotomy, creation of fear psychosis among civilians, trust deficit, need for security sector reforms, prolonged suffering of masses, need for sense of accountability among men in uniform and most importantly ‘military installed as machines of oppression’, connotes everything and is a thick description of reflecting upon the situation of masses vis-a-vis troops, speaking academically. The writer has superficially gone through only for the sake of commenting, hence misinterpreted my say so shabbily. Coming up with only an fuming outburst, laymanish examplification and over reaction to nothing does hardly speak of the maturity and balance in arguments as for as the academic purview is concerned. What is his say on when, i state, ‘it may not be wrong to mention that army too is responsible for the chaos, terror and oppression among the civilians’, which covers his whole write-up and carves out a balanced view of arguing about army-civilian dichotomy and the significance of its immediate resolution. Also building sentences by reflecting on a line in the middle of the write-up but avoiding what precedes it and what follows ,is purely unscholarly a task, discovering lack of expertise, wrong interpretation and sheer pessimism on the part of the writer .The use of the phrase ‘negative stereotyping’ was used in the context of general institution of army round the globe, which has several bad labels on it and my point is as the military professionalism of Egyptian army ,loaded with ethical issues of public operation, proved those stereotypes negative and false and the whole institution of army has lessons to learn about Egyptian Army’s crisis handling tactics and realising that they are supposed to save not to kill, they are to empower not to impoverish, they are to deliver in odds ,not to perpetrate violence and terror. We need to work upon our fallacies and limitation beset to our institutions to build peace in place of chaos, disorder and terror, which can automatically liberate us from identity and personality crisis, speaking from the structuralist point of view, but the writer still feels confused about my statements and deems them unscientific and devoid of theory inputs from psychological and sociological point of view, which speaks of his sloth ridden scholarship. He must know that military sociology is one of the prime sub-disciplines of sociology which focuses upon the social life dealings of military and sees it as an important institution, which needs attention in order to work out something good for the holistic geography of crisis in Kashmir. Also at the end he repeats, the same sentences mentioned by me that army can prove an instrument of empowerment for its own people and his very title speaks empower people and not institutions which reflects his immaturity, ambiguity, subjectivity and poor frame work of argument building. Throwing arguments and mere criticism of the system and institutions will hardly culminate into some functional measure for peace building in our conflict ridden vale and irritated outbursts accompanied with mis-quoting of writers cannot do the needful, writers should contribute for peace via their functional arguments, centred at peace building, improving the situation and use their capacity and scholarship for the common good and critics should add more and rectify for good, but not resort to the venomous provoking of people and painting particular social institutions as black and tainted. Use knowledge in building bridges, dig out ways which can literally lead us to work for peace and realise it soon. Last but not the least, writing on Kashmir does not require merely psychological or sociological theories, given by westerners, in this part of the globe, we need contextual observation and analysis, honest reach out to people of the suppressed geography and focussed group interactions to see what actually people aspire for and then look for the ways to actualise their aspirations and heal their sufferings. The writer needs to realise that for empowerment of people, empowering institutions is a pre-requisite, because people cannot be empowered from vacuum. For the real emancipation of masses it is mandatory to enrich our institutions functionally and pick out what ails them, because institutions devise the method of working of the society composed of nothing but the people. (Adfar Shah is a Doctoral Candidate of Sociology at Faculty of Social Sciences, Jamia Millia Islamia-Central University, New Delhi. Reach at adfer.syed@gmail.com).
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