Leadership at the altar of justice.

And again, I go back to answering what leadership means in the contexts I work in. It starts with realigning, almost recollecting the purpose with which I started, stayed and expanded on the ideas of conflict, politics and education. That I have an organisation now, which implicates more people towards this conundrum, keeps my commitment to it always under the radar of nuance. One such nuance is in the ethereal effect, on the communities we work with, of an incidence of targeted killings and the narratives with which it is reported, discussed after. 

And this, I must emphasise, is my job - to notice what is brewing underneath what is being said, passed, felt, lost, projected and contained in this moment, where a group of Kashmiri and non-kashmiri fellows, experiencing a piece of the never-normalcy, are looking towards the organisation to reaffirm their belief in the work they committed to do. My job is also to listen to the discourse emerging in the community, from the fringes of politics and the manipulative economy of violence. Particularly today, what I’m hearing the community ask is, “What will this mean for us? Are we going back into the endless recourse of proving we’re not collectively guilty?” 

Because the killing of tourists is and has been treated differently from the killing of locals. And the narratives of hate have enabled this dichotomy. So today, my job demands that I listen more carefully to what is coming up for the communities I build and the communities they work with. 

And I do this with the awareness that I’m coping with a debilitating sensation of underconfidence in my belly, when I face the angry Indians virtually and physically in my routines, who are talking of (quote) “tearing them Muslims (Pakistanis alike) into 4 pieces”. More upsettingly, these are my family, who I know have only made it a means to swell in a false pride that keeps their violence afloat. 

So when I come back to my fellow teachers, students, school leaders, parents and everyone in the field that has held the organisation to its core, I speak from this critical consciousness, that we may loosely call empathy, and offer a stance that may continue to find resilience. 

And as a parallel practice, when I go back to my desk as a founder of this movement, I’m learning, yet again, why the presence of non-Kashmiri fellows on the field is non-negotiable for a multi-front success of this work, irrespective of the limitations it offers to scale; that the organisation’s strategy to engage people in building their truth by situating themselves locally, is critical. Because this truth is not only about the pertinence of power in polarisation, but also about the lived impact of it on the hearts and routines of people enduring it. 

And this is an instance of leadership in regions enduring protracted armed conflict. 

As a first, and to substantiate what it looks like in conversation with my team, I’m attaching a letter that I sent to them this morning. It is an offering in the direction of understanding what it takes to lead from intersectionality in such geographies.  

Dear fellows, 

I’m aware that today must feel different to some of you. And to some of you, it may also be one more of many such days. You have either woken up to witness one of the first few instances of armed volatility that you have heard in our discussions. Or you have woken up to another day of a strike call, still snuggling up to the restored hopelessness you slept with last night. You have either woken up to your families and loved ones checking on you, asking you to return to ‘safety’. Or, you have slept, calling people to check on them, to share grief and to offer help, almost apologetically, feeling the burden of what feels like a collective failure on Kashmir. 

And we have all woken up withnessing what protracted conflict and violent routines mean - words that were deeply discussed but have now come to life, with flesh and meaning and a perspective to lead us through. We have all slept with the experience of disruption, sound of violence and the load of fear, repression, grit and the confusion between it all. And we have woken up, realising that we have taken a few steps back and that moving forward for us and our students will need some redoing. 

I remember when I had survived an all-night encounter being carried out right from my house there, I was greeted next morning, just how everyone does, with a hand-shake offering “Mubarak” or “congratulations” with “you survived, you’re alive, you’re awake, you’re seeing one more day” in its undertone. That moment demanded a particular kind of humility in me. Of recognising that my experience was a part of a collective graver agony, and that it was a piece in the larger hunger for learning I carried. And from there on, I needed to witness what’s happening to me - fear, remorse, doubts, withdrawals, sickness, determination, loathing, sinking, exhaustion - in juxtaposition with what I’d read about or heard from a distance happening to my students, teachers, colleagues, multiplied by lengths and depths. So, I’m writing to you to reiterate that this is a part of your sense-making, but this is not only yours. I’m writing to urge you not to limit yourself to your personal experience of it today, but to begin with and unpack a layer of learning that was otherwise borrowed.  

I must also mention that we do not take the liberty/luxury/privilege to ignore or disembark from the politics of this incident in the context of what we have been able to understand of Kashmir so far. Today, out of all days, we do not choose to switch off our questions and see what is being asked of us to see. Even if information is limited, lead with curiosity and distance yourself from reducing yourself or anyone into any commonly circulating narrative. 

And lastly, I want to mention that this cohort is a community of people with new and old experiences of struggles - shared yet diverse, new yet relatable, old yet surprising. And this community needs itself the most on days such as this. This was one thing I know I missed when I was there, in a time when this was more frequent, closer. And this is true not just for an outsider identity. This is for every identity amongst us that is feeling wounded. So I urge you to hold on to this community. Offer and ask for a nurturing presence. And while you do so, keep your critical lenses high towards the discourses that may fall on your ears. Unpack, listen, contain and propel - together. 

You are the movement. You are the journey. And you are the vehicles of a dream that your children see with you - of a world that is yet to become. Ameen. 

I am offering my presence. Any way you need. I love you. 

23-04-2025