ABSTRACT
Almost every incident involving an insurgent outfit as a perpetrator of an outrage, or a counter-insurgency operation by the security forces in which a person or persons (of whatever self-proclaimed or assigned value-loaded description — militant, insurgent, terrorist, separatist, secessionist or any other) were killed, received extensive coverage. The death of innocent civilians as hapless victims of insurgents, or of insurgent(s) in counter-insurgency operations, was covered widely, with several follow-up reports detailing the background of the victims, providing a rounded picture of the incident as well as of the individuals involved, as perpetrators or as victims. Indeed, given the larger national and international trends in society and politics, seemingly so well-entrenched and indeed irreversible, memory has become a dangerous part of a people’s inheritance. Memory, ever so fragile, now necessarily stored away in a forgotten recess of one’s being, has become a poor and unserviceable conscience-keeper.
