Faesal needed to be glorified not because Indians get a sadistic pleasure by humiliating Kashimris, as he so alleges. No. But because a message needs to be sent across to angry, disgruntled youths that a richer, more fulfilling future is possible if they, like Faesal, choose to pick up the book instead of gun or stones.

IAS officer Shah Faesal has been scathing in his criticism of Indian national media and the way the Kashmir unrest is being beamed into our drawing rooms. Amid a cacophony of voices, we need to sit up and listen to him because unlike most anchors of TV channels based in New Delhi, the 2009 IAS topper is a Kashmiri, who lives with his family in the conflict zone and is directly affected by the violence.

It is precisely for this reason that we must see his articles — one carried by The Indian Express on Tuesday and the other a recent Facebook post — for what they are. An impassioned, frenetic plea by an Indian civil servant who would rather distance himself from New Delhi than be held up as a progressive Kashmiri icon and risk his own and his family's safety at the hands of "enraged Kashmiri youth".

Bear in mind that 14 years ago, Faesal's father Ghulam Rasool Shah was killed by militants because he refused to shelter them.

The wounds are understandably still fresh as Faesal reveals in a few heart-wrenching lines:

"On the afternoon of 13 July, my one-year-old child was finding it difficult to sleep because the adjacent curfewed street had been rattling with a sinister medley of azadi slogans and tear-gas explosions since daybreak… Three decades ago, I was in a similar moment with my father stroking me to sleep while mortar shells were pounding the hills in our backyard."

So unsettled was Faesal by the electronic media's campaign that pitted him against slain Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani that he threatened to even resign last Friday than being part of a "sadistic propaganda machine" indulging in "conventional savagery that cashes on falsehoods, divides people and creates more hatred" at a time when Kashmir was "mourning its dead".

These are strong words.

A man who has suffered deep personal loss from violence does not want the cycle to be repeated. Beyond this justifiable and legitimate context, however, Shah Faesal's articles are immensely problematic.

Instead of addressing the unrest, Faesal reinforces the alienation of Kashmiris. He criticises the role of the government while being a part of it as a public servant. And most importantly, in going after the Indian media and accusing it of spreading venom against Kashmiris, he ends up demonising the "enraged Kashmiri youth" more damningly than any jingoistic channel could.

Before I explain, let's consider a simple question: Why did Indian media highlight the Faesal story at every crucial stage of his life?

The story of Faesal being the first Kashmiri to top the IAS exam was widely covered in 2009. Even by those jingoistic channels that he despises. His recent articles — though bitingly critical of the media, public perception around Kashmir and government's role in it — have found wide, viral coverage in both mainstream and social media.

This has been possible because in Faesal, Indians see a hero. An unbending will who despite the circumstances that he was thrown into, overcame his irreparable personal loss to achieve a goal that eludes many. This is an inspirational story that needs to be repeated many times over.

Some may disagree with his sweeping generaliastions, but Indians by and large reserve the greatest respect for Faesal. They attach huge importance to his voice, not just because he serves as the guiding star for many aspirational youths across India, but also because of his unique position as a Kashmiri who, like Burhan Wani, had a grievance but unlike Wani, refused to use it as an excuse for picking up the gun. It was expressed most succinctly by Faesal himself in the past.

"…Obviously, being a Kashmiri, it does feel different because we have certain perceptions and stereotypes about Kashmiri youth. I think my selection is to some extent a punch on all those stereotypical notions that Kashmir can only produce terrorists."

This statement, issued by him in 2011, touches the very crux of the debate about why TV channels were glorifying his image vis-à-vis Wani's during the present unrest. His story needed to be glorified not because Indians get a sadistic pleasure by humiliating Kashimris, as he so alleges. No. But because a message needs to be sent across to angry, disgruntled youths that a richer, more fulfilling future is possible if they, like Faesal, choose to pick up the book instead of gun or stones.

There is nothing more challenging to uproot than another person's worldview.

This is not, however, to endorse the 'vigilante journalism' or 'campaign journalism' that callously and criminally calls for "dead militants to be burnt along with garbage instead of being buried in India’s land".

That is a misrepresentation of my argument. Misinformation, disinformation, bad data, selective outrage, cherry picking of facts and even outright lies to reinforce a dominant narrative are issues Indian media at large must deal with and introspect about.

But it is a bit rich when Faesal accuses Indian media of "sheer insensitivity and shallowness" for juxtaposing his picture with that of the militant commanders. His unflattering indictment that media "markets TRPs as national interest and does business over the dead bodies of young men" is exposed more as a concern for his personal safety than any grand, balanced commentary on the state of media coverage.

"Next day, I left for my office, incognito, wearing a kurta-pyjama and a farmer’s cap, hopping across check posts like a thief, knowing well that if a group of enraged youngsters recognised me, I might be in trouble, and rightly so, for falling on the wrong side of the Kashmiri vs Indian binary at such a critical juncture. Abusive comments on my Facebook wall had the same refrain."

These words reveal the insecurity that he faces from his own people which forces him to even preemptively justify the violence should he be subjected to it. For what? Being touted as an icon in Indian TV channels? Who is stereotyping the Kashmiris here and reinforcing the alienation? The jingoistic TV channels? Or Faesal himself?

Some of the coverage is doubtlessly odious, loud and nauseating. But this has been the scourge of media for a very long time. Faesal correctly says, "the biggest challenge for India, this time, is how to reclaim the custody of “national interest” from its national media, and restore communication with its neighbours and people." There can be no doubt about the perils of jingoism and hyper-nationalist sentiments that does away with all nuances. He is also correct to ask the media to "tone down the jingoistic rhetoric".

But if news channels in India are washing away nuances in favour of a black and white debate, so too, unfortunately, is Faesal.

He conflates several issues, omits crucial data and makes a strange claim that "India has been communicating to Kashmiris through rigged elections, dismissal of elected governments, through encounters and corruption." And goes on to say that Kashmiri youths see India as "synonymous with a military bunker or a police vehicle or a ranting panelist on prime time television" and that this cannot "win Kashmiri hearts".

In one fell swoop, Faesal completely disregards Pakistan's role in fuelling the Kashmir dispute or the increasing threat of Islamist radicalism in violence and unequivocally lays everything at India's door.

In an article titled 'Disown jihadist 'freedom fighters' in Kashmir' in Pakistan-based newspaper The Nation, columnist Kunwar Khuldune Shahid writes: "Burhan Wani was the offspring of the global jihadist movement that emerged in the last quarter of the previous century, hammering Muslim-majority freedom movements into Islamist struggles wherever the occupying force was ‘non-Muslim’— including Palestine, Kashmir and East Turkestan… Wani, like countless other youngsters, unfortunately fell prey to jihadism in a land becoming increasingly fertile for radical Islam."

While talking about "winning of hearts", there is not a single line anywhere in Faesal's posts on Kashmiri Pandits, 99 percent of whom were forced to leave the valley by 1990. His comments are equally shorn of any mention of the causes of military presence in Kashmir, where Pakistan has been busy waging a proxy war by training militants and funding separatist groups.

We should, however, take note of and respect Faesal's concerns.

Let's not thrust heroism on an unwilling idol.