Nouman took his life, and is gone. Are Kashmir’s schools failing our children?

By: Arjimand Hussain

It is difficult to write this without trembling. A 14-year-old boy, Nouman, has taken his life. A child who should have been dreaming about football or poetry or coding. A child who, like any teen, was trying to find himself – through symbols, expression, confusion, and yes, body tattoos. And yet, what seems to have met him at school was not guidance, not understanding, not care, but relentless humiliation, exposure and moral policing.

I have studied, and worked on, school reforms in multiple countries, and learnt how obsolete Kashmir’s schooling system actually is. I have seen some of Kashmir’s amazing schools – across cities, towns and villages – that uplift our children. I hold some of my friends, who have set up great schools in Kashmir, in high esteem. I have, sadly, also been witnessing how some of our schools can destroy Kashmir’s children.

This article is not meant to shame anyone. It is addressed to all of us, as a society, with a hand-folded request that we need to act for the sake of our children and our collective future.

Noman was a student of Kashmir Harvard School. His young sister, who is said to have raised him after their mother’s death, has come forward with inspiring strength and clarity that shakes the conscience. She says he was repeatedly called out, sometimes stripped to show his tattoos in the school office. He was shamed, reported on, called names. What began as a childish experiment turned into a public trial, inside classrooms and school corridors.

We need to ask this unequivocally: even if a school disagrees with body tattoos, how does public naming and shaming a minor become an acceptable response? Even if the boy has had certain behavioral challenges, couldn’t we have helped him differently? Does humiliation build discipline?

The Imam of Dalal Mohalla mosque said something deeply wise: even if tattoos are religiously discouraged, punishing and ridiculing a child is not the answer. He also said our schools are not meant to do moral policing. And that is exactly the truth. Noman didn’t need punishment. He needed the empathy and perspective his young sister exhibits.

But Noman’s suicide is not just a tragedy of one child, one school or one poor policy. It is symptomatic of a larger crisis in Kashmir’s schooling system, mainly in the private schools.

Let us be honest: many of our private schools, barring a few bright exceptions, are deeply broken. Most are run like profit-making enterprises with a thin layer of education painted over them. The goal is not holistic development, it is Board results, trophies and celebrity chief guests. Students are “products,” not people.

Our teachers, who should be the soul of education, are often underpaid, underprepared and overburdened. Many are hired not for their pedagogical strength or emotional intelligence but for their ability to enforce rigid discipline or teach to the test. They are rarely trained to handle students’ emotional needs. Most haven’t even had a serious workshop on mental health or trauma-informed schooling. No wonder their first instinct is often to shame, punish or label children as “naughty,” “distracted,” or “dangerous.” Still, we have a great number of teachers who defy the system and manage to do wonders.

Some of our schools are financially stressed and that stress percolates down into how they treat both staff and students. A child becomes a fee-paying unit. A teacher becomes a task executor. Empathy, flexibility, humanity, all begin to disappear.

When students show signs of distress, creativity, silence or rebellion, most of our schools panic. Instead of asking “What happened to this child?” they ask “What is wrong with this child?” Many schools don’t have trained counselors. In fact, most school administrators don’t even know the difference between a counselor, a psychologist and a psychiatrist. I have seen teachers in Kashmir schools casually tell parents to “take your child to a psychiatrist”, leaving them shellshocked and groping for answers.

Discipline has become a dirty word in many Kashmir schools, interpreted as obedience, conformity and blind submission. Children who don’t fit in are labelled, sidelined or punished.

There is a counter argument:  disciplining a child is the primary responsibility of parents, and that schools cannot be held accountable for parents’ domestic probelms. True. But our schools should not be aggravate, or even trigger, such problems.

There is a another growing constituency in Kashmir calling for ‘moral education’ in schools. Yes, our schools need child-sensitive moral education, but they don’t need moral policing. When you have untrained teachers and administrators interpreting and defining “morality” for teens navigating their identities, the result is often damaging. Children are made to feel ashamed of their bodies, their feelings, their mistakes.

This culture must end. Now!

We must demand justice for Noman. Not just legal or administrative justice, but moral justice. A public acknowledgment that he was wronged. That Kashmir, as a society, trying to balance its deep-rooted dogmas with modern education, failed him.

We must also demand reform for our schools. Real, deep reform.

Let us make it mandatory for all private, and also public, schools, in J&K to hire certified counselors and conduct regular, genuine training in child rights, mental health and inclusive education. This is not asking for the moon. It is a norm globally.

Let us bring accountability into school operations, not just for academic outcomes, but for how children are treated. Let us stop this culture of intimidation, moral superiority and judgementalism.

And finally, any inquiry into Noman’s death must include a reputed psychologist and clinical mental health expert. Not just bureaucrats or education officers. We need people who understand what trauma looks like. What humiliation does to a young mind.

Noman is, sadly, gone. But let him not be forgotten. Let his story change something. Let it shake our schooling system into becoming safe again.
For every child sitting in a classroom afraid to be different, for every boy or girl struggling to make sense of who they are, we owe them better.

School education is a state (oops, UT!) subject. Omar Abdullah government has ample opportunities in the fields of education, environment, positive social change, etc. to list a few tangible goals which could be easily achieved within his government’s boundaries. School education reform should be his Priority Number 1.

Not all of Kashmir’s shamed children do what Nouman did to himself. Most are broken silently, for ever. We owe our children schools where dignity is not a privilege, but a right.

The author is a development economist, and has worked on sustainable development issues in over 15 countries. He is founder of Ziraat Times.