Gurmehar Kaur

DELHI

Gurmehar Kaur, 20, lost her father Captain Mandeep Singh in the 1999 Kargil war. She was only two at that time. At age six, she tried to stab a woman in a burqa “because of hatred for Pakistan and Pakistanis.”

As she puts it, “I tried to stab her because for some strange reason I thought she was responsible for my father’s death.” Later, her mother counselled her and told her that it was not Pakistan or Pakistanis, but the war that killed her dad.

A year ago, Kaur, a native of Jalandhar, put up a silent video in which she held up a controversial placard that said, “Pakistan did not kill my dad, war killed him.”

The video asked both India and Pakistan to put an end to state-sponsored terrorism and hatred. Created by Mumbai-based prominent social commentator Ram Subramanian and posted on social media in April last year, her video, has had more than 1.5 million views so far.