Break the impasse

SITUATION IN kashmir : Kashmir has slipped into anarchy with no leadership and this dangerous dimension is reaching the point of no return.

For over 40 days now, Kashmir has been seething in anger and rage. With nearly 70 people having been killed in police and para-military forces’ firing, around 7,000 people have been injured, that is undoubtedly the highest number in any phase of unrest in Valley since 1989. Not only has this number been high but also the freshly introduced pellet gun has added a new category – of blinded people – since 400 boys and girls got injuries and half of them may not be able to see for rest of their lives.

Kashmir is caged with continuous curfew, businesses are shut and schools are closed since July 9, when Hizbul Mujahi-deen commander Burhan Wani was kill-ed in an encounter. This is not for the fir-st time Valley has seen the political unrest as the trail of death and destruction seen in 2008 and 2010 is still etched in our memory. But this time, the cry for “azaadi” from India is much louder with a completely new generation daring security forces to kill them. Kashmir has never seen this level of hate against India.

Many people call it “Burhanisation” of “movement for azaadi” as the way his death galvanised the unending protests particularly in South Kashmir; it seems his death rediscovered the anger against India, though it had never subsided. The protests are continuing unabated and every day fresh killings are infusing new life into them.

The joint platform of three separatist leaders – Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Yasin Malik – has no doubt been giving the protest calendars and calling for shutdowns but on the ground, their irrelevance has also become known. Their shutdowns have not been implemented as the government has hardly lifted restrictions and if they had called for relaxation, there has been resistance from the groups of boys who are manning the streets.

Kashmir has slipped into anarchy with no leadership and this dangerous dimension is reaching the point of no return. Caging the separatist leaders has added to the vacuum and the mainstream leaders or “elected representatives,” have made a retreat. Mushtaq Shah, the PDP MLA from Tral, the town from where Burhan hailed, called him a “pious and kind man” saying that he was not a terrorist. Many MLA’s have faced the wrath of agitators and have not visited their constituencies even once.

With the BJP government blaming Pakistan for the trouble, the reality on the ground is that the entire Kashmir is on a warpath. Pakistan might have started looking at gains after the trouble eru-pted, but the space for that has been created by Delhi which has been in a denial mode vis-a-vis Kashmir for a long time.

Burhan was a trigger as the political volcano that existed in Kashmir just needed a spark to explode. Giving all the “credit” to Pakistan for putting Kashmir on the boil for so long brings out an important question, “then where does India stand in Kashmir?”  In 2008 and 2010, Kashmir witnessed a similar pattern of protests but ultimately culminating in anti-India and pro-azaadi rage.

Those situations died down, people even participated in elections in huge numbers electing MLAs and MPs but that hardly changed the political reality deeply rooted in disaffection and discontentment.

Today’s young man in Kashmir is openly challenging the security forces with stones, crying for azaadi and wishing to get “shahadat” (martyrdom). He is difficult to be tamed with sops like employment and development. He has since graduated from being an ordinary anti-Indian to be one who makes no bones about being the one who “hates India.”

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke from the ramparts of Red Fort on August 15, he was expected to emulate A B Vajpayee, whose expressions of “Insaniyat, Jamhuriyat and Kashmiriyat” (Humanity, Democracy and Kashmiriyat), he has been invoking repeatedly.  He not only failed his own commitment but did not even refer to Kashmir with a mild remorse over the loss of lives.

Alienated by neglect

Modi went afar to Balochistan, obviously to nail Pakistan. Did he deliberately ignore the burning Kashmir, which he believes is an integral part of India, or he really does not know what is happening on the ground? The neglect that has become the hallmark of BJP government’s Kashmir policy has furthered the distance between Srinagar and New Delhi.

Pushing Kashmiris to the wall by giving them an impression that their killings do not matter has worsened the situation on the ground. The BJP is in coalition with the PDP in the state and Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, who spoke about sufferings of people in her August 15 speech, is disempowered by all means. Once a vibrant politician who could even visit militant homes is on way to get consumed in this apathy that is demonstrated by Delhi. Her predecessor Omar Abdullah rightly said that PDP losing ground does not necessarily mean that his National Conference was gaining - it is going to the separatists.

Today, Kashmir has gone back to the 1990s when an entire population was counting days to be “free”. A generation that grew up after 1990 under the shadow of gun refuses to listen to anybody. They are educated, tech savvy, argumentative and furious. They don’t trust their leaders and think they can choose their own path. With continuous absence of political engagement, Kashmir is on the brink. It can only be brought back to normalcy by following the 2003-2007 model of political engagement that was on track – New Delhi-Islamabad and New Delhi-Srinagar.

Pakistan cannot be ignored even as it is part of problem, but it undoubtedly is part of the solution as well, and that’s what the derailed process of dialogue has taught us. The multi track engagement has delivered and the thread needs to be picked up from there. Security forces are not an answer to the current Kashmir impasse, but dialogue and reach out, is.

(The writer is Editor-in-Chief of Srinagar-based English daily Rising Kashmir)