Dwarika Prasad Sharma
The several platitudes that have kept swirling around in the Kashmir discourse have been used and abused by interest groups to such an extent that they have progressively lost their acuity and meaning.
After the death of a Tamil Nadu tourist by a stone thrown at his vehicle near Srinagar, the travel agents’ chief, while decrying the attack, said that tourism should be treated strictly as a legit economic activity and not be made a target in any protest. But he soon dragged in the “Kashmir issue” and the need to unravel it.
The “Kashmir issue” was put into his mouth by a reporter. It happens, and whoever wags his chin about disciplining the wayward youth, soon brackets it with “the larger Kashmir Issue”. So the immediate concern goes for a toss.
The sheer slipperiness and duplicity of opinion leaders have been weaving woolly tangles and complicating the issue. Omar Abdullah called the stone-throwers who caused the Tamil youth’s death “goons”. His father Farooq Abdullah last month called the stone-throwers “freedom fighters”. Kashmiri politicians change their tacks depending on time and place. It is a well-established truism that they say one thing in Kashmir, another in Jammu and yet another in Delhi, with several permutations and combinations thrown in.
After the tourist’s death, there were voices wanting strong public opinion against the wanton youth. Such public opinion has to be sustained to be effective. But in Kashmir this does not happen. People who make a straight statement one moment, soon twist it to confuse the issue.
“Intellectuals” and human rights activists have come out with the take that the Hurriyat leaders, “the most potent force” that could leash in the youth, are stymied as they themselves have been put on the leash by security agencies. But these jholawallahs have not been put on the leash and are continuing to lash their tongues. They are continuing to grab the stone debris as some holy dropping from a holy war.
This writer, during his forays into Kashmir, has had exasperating experience of how short is the duration of apparently strong positions of people. Their opinions which went into print were the next day either refuted or sought to be obfuscated with qualifications.
Mehmooba Mufti has been issuing homilies to the Union government to show statesmanship to stem the unrest and violence by opening a dialogue with the “stakeholders”. Should she not try to cultivate statesmanship herself and move on from mere vote-bank politics? She obviously does not have the stature and will continue to be a babe in the woods. The “statesmanship” of Kashmiri leaders centres on concessions for the recalciterants.
Her latest is asking the Union Government to declare a unilateral ceasefire in the security forces’ operations in Kashmir. She has lied that this is the consensus opinion of the all-party meeting she called in the wake of the rise in violence and the nationwide concern that the tourist’s death caused. Has she and her team done any groundwork for a forward movement of any dialogue process? Has she done any homework to figure out the pros and cons of a unilateral ceasefire when scaled-up ops of the security forces are showing good results?
She did little or no homework before dropping cases against 4,800 stone-throwers. Has the mischief abated? The unilateral ceasefire suggestion is another of her notional and nebulous “confidence-building” measures.
What I would see as statesmanship is for her to act as a prima donna in Track One, that is, to lead from the front in trying to bring around the “alienated stakeholders”, especially the youth. One is not sure that the youth would listen to the Hurriyat leaders, unless, as suspected, they are holding their strings. There have been reports that children even defy their parents when asked not go to a protest. Do the children see the protests as part of “a larger political issue”, or simply as ducks and drakes fun?
Was Haseeb Drabu, the unceremoniously sacked finance minister, being politically incorrect when he said that the Kashmir problem was not just a political issue but a social one as well? He was treated as a pariah by his own party, other mainstream parties and the separatists. How could he inject such a trite proposition into a discourse laden with grandiose clichés? And then, why should part of the responsibility be shifted to Kashmiri leadership by a “social issue” intrusion when the comfortable “political problem” formulation lays the onus squarely on the Union?
The local political leadership should consciously work things to a position where they can say that those on the other side of the fence have been sufficiently brought around to a bilateral approach and the Union can now step in to clinch issues. Whenever the Army leadership has felt that the security forces have levelled off the field enough for political leaders to step forward, they have frittered away the gains with their vote-bank and power politics. Now Army chief Bipin Rawat has warned the gun and stone-wielding youth that they can challenge the force only at their own peril.
He has said: “We will always fight those who seek aazadi, those who want to secede. It’s not going to happen, never.” This is a home truth that the terrorists, the separatists and even the mainstream politicians have to remember. Gen Rawat has also made the point that the approach of the Army has been humane and has compared it to the use of tanks and fighter planes in Syria and Pakistan in similar situations.
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