In pre-industrial society, the child was the source of family earnings. Children were an important component of society as they would provide for their community, offer their family the support and care they needed. In the medieval era, children helped their fathers to spin thread to be woven on the loom.
Now, if we were to ask, can children change society, there would be a lot of assumptions carried out by civil society, policymakers or by people within the community. These assumptions indicate how the world perceives children and the task that can be carried out by them within the lived communities.
With the advent of industrialisation in 19th and 20th centuries, children were bogged down by many catastrophic events where their situation of participation in decision-making and participation in activities were marked by age, culture, their structural situation within their family.
According to Alanen (2009), in our everyday lives, the terms childhood and adulthood are mostly taken to refer to two stages in the biography of human individuals. In contrast, childhood comes first and is followed through the transitional stage of youth, by adulthood and later, by old age. Hence, these type of relations within the social construction of childhood denotes the position or limitation within which a child—who is part of the phenomenon of childhood—can function, thereby laying down our assumptions about their age, and maturity in taking decisions.
I find that in an adult dominated society, we tend to make decisions on behalf of young children without taking into account their needs. It has strongly been urged by researchers and theorists of various disciplines of childhood studies that there has to be a consensus and identification of needs as well as the interest of both the parties involved in decision-making.
On August 5, as Kashmir‘s special status was revoked, the city went into total blackout. All the local and regional parties leaders were put into house arrest by the NDA (National Democratic Alliance); the Valley had seen many protests at various times, and the central government didn’t want to take any chance as they knew this decision would lead to unrest and cause detrimental effects on the minds of people. And yes it had. Shops were shut down, schools and universities were closed, and many young persons were abused or had tear gas thrown at them by the army.
My purpose of sharing this story is that I want to throw light on such political events, their impact on young people and the inability of people to consider them humans before children. It is because of this anger fermenting in the minds of these young people that leads them to join different militant groups who sway them over the term of ‘Jihad‘. Young people have been part of the struggles, but their idea of struggle has been dampened by declaring them as minors, considering them children who go to school and not recognising their rights to go to school and education.
I wish to make the case that finally challenges the traditional ideas of students as social actors who should only participate as recipients in the teaching space. This case study also helps to question the phenomenon and the reasons behind the plausible anomalies that cause their participation to work on the ground, but is unidentified in the political sphere where people tend to make decisions on their behalf. Should the idea of democracy be rested upon only those who are 18 or above? Can we take age as an indicator to define the voice and opinion of individuals in the struggle for freedom of speech without being conscious about the space and time in which the actors come into play?