It’s time for political consolidation in J&K

The April 22 Baisaran massacre, we are told, has been avenged with ‘Operation Sindoor’ – the terrorists have been killed in their principal centres and launchpads; Pakistan has been taught a lesson and will be deterred from future misadventures; India has demonstrated her power to the world. We can simply move on, now.

The truth is that the perpetrators of the massacre are still at large; its alleged planners – visibly including Sajid Saifullah Jatt of the Lashkar-e-Taiba – are addressing open mass meetings in Pakistan, and the Jaish-e-Mohammad, the other leading terrorist organisation operating in J&K, has reissued direct threats to escalate jihad. The targets of Indian missiles had been cleared of all high-value assets before the ‘Operation Sindoor’ strikes, after a fortnight of high-decibel threats. Senior Pakistan military officials, in full uniform, have attended the funeral services of the few known terrorists, who were killed in the strikes by India. Pakistan has declared victory, promoted its army chief to the rank of Field Marshal. The Pakistan Army, which was teetering on the edge of a domestic crisis, has enormously consolidated its prestige and authority. Far from attracting opprobrium, Pakistan appears to have gained internationally, and, dangerously, its ‘friendship’ with China has become all the more ‘ironclad’.

Operation Sindoor is and will continue to be heavily debated. But the massacre that provoked it appears to have largely been pushed out of mind. This is unfortunate because there are crucial lessons to learn.

The first and most obvious is that any purported ‘normalcy’ in J&K is at perpetual risk. The terrorists will look for, and find, vulnerabilities, as long as they have safe havens and support in Pakistan, even if sympathy among locals in Kashmir were to vanish entirely, and irrespective of force saturation. Under present circumstances, ‘zero terrorism’ is an irrational objective in a theatre that has seen conflict for over 35 years, and where at least 127 persons, including 31 civilians and 26 security force personnel, were killed in 2024 (SATP data).

It is important to underline, here, that the proclaimed ‘official’ assessments were based on ideology-led falsehoods, most significantly including the claims that the ‘abrogation’ of Article 370, the surgical strikes of 2016 and the Balakot bombings of 2019, and the ‘muscularity’ of counter-terrorism responses under the present government had resulted in unprecedented ‘normalisation’.  It is useful to recall that terrorism-linked fatalities had bottomed out in J&K at 121 in 2012, a level that the present regime is yet to restore, and this was achieved with what remained of Article 370 yet in place, and without the other performative actions the present regime boasts of.

A corollary is that the decision to open up the Valley to mass tourism, clearly without a reality-based assessment of risk, and without sufficient strategic planning for the regulation and protection of these massive numbers, was again based on a partisan ideological agenda, and was rash and ill-advised.

After the massacre, there were spontaneous and widespread protests across the Valley, condemning the terrorists. Instead of harnessing this groundswell of positive sentiment, the government chose, instead, to bring bulldozers and explosives to the homes of the families of some terrorists, and this latter was triumphantly and repeatedly projected through captive media, bringing sensationalism and hate centre-stage, even as the local sentiment against the terrorists was pushed into the margins.

The security forces have done their job in J&K, bringing terrorism-related fatalities down from the thousands each year to the low hundreds. The time now is for political consolidation. Regrettably, the present regime is choosing to feed, rather than address, residual alienation, pushing locals out of the political and administrative space after the nullification of Article 370, and inflicting collective punishment on the people of Kashmir.

The political discourse in the country has been overwhelmed with untruths, and these have contaminated the strategic and security discourse as well. Nothing could be more dangerous for India’s future.

(The writer is the Executive Director of the Institute of Conflict Management. The article reflects his personal views.)