The JNU sedition case in 2016 brought out in the open the evil that has flourished undeterred in many high profile universities. The slogans that were raised that fateful night, which was exactly three years after terrorist Afzal Guru was hanged till death, revealed that Kashmiri Jihad had sympathizers in the highest institutions of this country.

Afzal Guru was one of the main conspirators behind the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001. He was ultimately convicted for his role in the attacks and subsequently hanged in 2013. Six policemen and two Parliament Security Service personnel were martyred during the attack. The event at JNU in 2016 was organized to commemorate the ‘death anniversary’ of the Islamic terrorist.

The most troubling of them, among the many troubling slogans that were raised night, after “Bharat tere tukde honge inshallah inshallah” was “Afzal hum sharminda hain tere qatil zinda hain”. Even for the average Indian, it appeared to be a direct threat against the people who performed their pious duty towards the country by eliminating an Islamic terrorist.

Read: A Kashmiri Pandit writes what he feels about ‘Kashmiriyat’

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Those who are aware of history, however, it would have been certain that the words were indeed a death threat to those involved in the whole series of events, starting straight at the top, that is, the judges who delivered the verdict. Indeed, that is the lesson history teaches us. The fate that befell Neelkanth Ganjoo, a High Court judge in Kashmir, is a stark reminder of the precise nature of that particular slogan.

Between 1966 to 1968, Judge Ganjoo presided over the trial of Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) co-founder Maqbool Bhat as a sessions court judge. In August 1968, he sentenced Maqbool Bhat to death for the murder of police constable Amar Chand in 1966. The Supreme Court upheld the verdict in 1982. Two years later, after JKLF terrorists in Britain murdered diplomat Ravindra Mhatre, the death sentence against Maqbool Bhat was carried out at Tihar Jail.

Five years later, in 1989, on November the 4th, Neelkanth Ganjoo was shot in broad daylight by JKLF terrorists. The judge who sentenced Maqbool Bhat to death during his time at the sessions court was among the first Kashmiri Pandits to be murdered by Islamic terrorists during the period of turmoil and grief. What happened to the Kashmiri Pandits requires no elaboration.

Thus, following the events of the night of 9th February 2016, when people claimed that the students were merely exercising their right to freedom of expression and political dissent, they were, intentionally or otherwise, ignoring the nature of the Jihad in Kashmir. One judge, who JKLF terrorists undoubtedly blamed for the justice that was meted out to Maqbool Bhat, has already been shot to death in the past. How many such murders do Jihadists have to commit before people stop trivializing slogans such as “Afzal hum sharminda hain tere qatil zinda hain”?

Afzal Guru, arguably, is the biggest face of the Kashmiri Jihad after Maqbool Bhat. To this day, Kashmir observes a shut down every year to mark the day Maqbool Bhat was hanged till death: February 11. Given the fate of the sessions court judge who sentenced him to death, the only reasonable way to interpret the slogan pertaining to Afzal Guru that was raised in JNU on the 9th of February, 2019, is to conclude that it was a direct threat to the judges who sentenced Afzal Guru to death.

People can continue to be ostriches but the fact of the matter is separatism in Kashmiri is merely a continuation of the thousand-year-old Islamic Jihad against the Hindu Civilization. India is considered a modern manifestation of it by Jihadists and thus, an attempt is made to claim the land of Jammu & Kashmir for Islam. When a Kashmiri separatist says, “Bharat tere tukde hinge inshallah inshallah,” it does not mean the kind of liberation that Tibetans demand from Chinese rule, it means Jihad. When a Kashmiri Separatist screams “Bharat ke barbadi tak Jung Chalegi”, it does not mean the tactics that the people of Hong Kong are embracing against the totalitarian Chinese state. It means Jihad.

Jihad is not political dissent, it is a declaration of war. Slogans in favour of Jihad are always a direct threat and ought to be treated as such. Declaring Jihad against the Indian Union cannot ever be considered as freedom of expression. Any attempt to do so either betrays malice against the Hindu Civilization or painful ignorance that ought not to be taken seriously by any sensible person.