Rajeev Kumar Nagotra
When a 6-8 years old walking with his mother on the pavement in a Handwara neighbourhood suddenly bends and picks up a stone on seeing a police van, it should be clear that the Kashmir issue is not a political problem. It is a psychological issue, one that needs to be dealt with professional dexterity. And, one must not fool oneself by fancying a Gandhi or a Modi resolve this problem in one or two tenures, for the one who is 6-8 years old today will go on to live at least another 70 years and during the course of his life, he will influence as many more minds and lives. The anti-India or (let us face it) anti-Hindu mindset will proliferate many times in these 70 years. Obviously, if we are talking about the prognosis of the condition and a plausible strategy to tackle it, we are talking about a timeline of a minimum three generations! Unless, of course, something really miraculous happens and the common Kashmiri steps out of his home one Independence Day morning and starts marching towards the Bakshi Stadium singing the Indian National Anthem loudly and proudly. But, that is a story of a distant future. The situation at present is an absolute mess, simply put.
Anybody who attempts to test the waters here is bound to be flabbergasted by the sheer complexity of the overlapping sub-layers. If one tries to measure the popular mood from the strength of the people in a given gathering, he will find as many mourners for the HM commander Burhan Wani as for the ex Home Minister of India Mufti Sayeed, as many people enforcing Geelani’s call for a shutdown as forming a beeline outside a polling station and as many people egging Dr. Farooq Abdullah to lead from the front as those backing Engineer Rashid. There are so many voices, congruent as well as incongruent, so many parties, relevant as well as irrelevant and so many aspects, important as well as unimportant, inside the valley that all an independent observer takes back home from here is bewilderment, fear and pity. Try to reason with the Kashmiri leadership and they would come up with issues that are phony and spurious at best. They harp on the UN resolutions of August 13, 1948. And, they continue to do that in the year 2017! Ask them as to who will get Pakistan to fulfill the pre-requisites for India to do her bit with regards to the referendum and they have no answer. They try to make the unrest appear legitimate by somehow giving it an ancient tinge. Now “ancient” is a heavy word in the Indian context where time needs to be measured in centuries if not millennia for a phenomenon to be truly considered ancient. Moreover, such an attempt will dilute the locus-standi of the neo-champions of “Kashmiriyat”. So, they date back their so called movement to 1931 when the Muslim majority of the state wished to be freed from the Dogra rule. The Mirwaiz of South Kashmir, Qazi Ahmed Yasir, prefers to take it further back to 1925 when Qazi Qamaruddin of South Kashmir defied a Dogra order and led a local agitation. That wish, freedom from the Dogra rule, was granted in 1947 for god’s sake! There has been no Dogra rule in the last 70 years and kashmiris have been ruled by their own sons and daughters. But, the struggle is still on and the pot is still boiling! They demand the right of self-determination as though it were ever denied to them. As a matter of fact, they exercise this right every six years in the state assembly elections and every five years in the union general elections. The situation is reminiscent of a funny scene in the bollywood flick Bunty aur Babli. Some people were protesting outside a minister’s house. The Minister arrives and asks “ye pradarshan kyu?”. The protestors reply “kyunki hume taqleef hai.” The Minister: “Kya taqleef hai?” The protestors: “Humari maange puri karo”. The Minister: “Maange kya hain?” The protestors: “Inqalab zindabad”. The minister: “Par maange kya hain?” The protestors: “Taanashahi nahin chalegi”. The Minister: “Arre, maange to bataao.” The protestors: “Angrezo Bharat chhoro”. In short, a few miscreants managed to grab 5 minutes of limelight and attention of the minister by protesting against a grief that did not exist in the first place. Unfortunately, with the drama being enacted in Kashmir, the separatists have succeeded in hogging the limelight for almost 70 years now. And, the entire nation, in general, and Jammu and Laddakh, in particular, are bearing the cost of this regressive culture of the kashmiris. Again, it is a psychological problem and does not deserve a political or economic bail out.
In fact Kashmir, for the most part of its existence in independent India, has had no grief at all. No grief that is not a making of Kashmiris themselves. The only thing that makes life in the valley anything but normal is the heavy presence of the armed troops. It is India’s greatest embarrassment too. However, it has resulted from the events that unfolded in the Valley in the late 80’s. The targeted elimination of the people of a particular background on this soil was something no government could have allowed. The nakas and the checking points that are seen every half a kilometer in Kashmir today did not exist in 1931 or even before 1989. The lawlessness of the Kashmiris, at the provocation of their hawkish handlers in Pakistan, invited the nakas and the military to their doorsteps. Once the cause is removed, the effect will also disappear. Rightly, therefore, the recent report of the civic body group led by Yashwant Sinha makes many cosmetic recommendations but does not demand any reduction in the troop strength. Cosmetic, because for the common Kashmiri the presence of troops is the core issue and any step that does not lead to their withdrawal is only superficial and inadequate. Amongst all the recommendations, which incidentally are but a revised edition of the healing touch policy of the late Mufti Sayeed, one important point that stood out was regarding the psychological counseling of the repeat offenders. Indeed, this is all the kashmiri youth needs today. They have been indoctrinated with an anti-India and anti-Hindu rhetoric. Young children are being raised on a steady and sumptuous feed of hatred, exclusiveness and intolerance. India needs to work on their de-addiction from this type of mindset and get them back into schools, universities and playgrounds and reinstate the pluralistic ethos that were so integral to kashmiriyat.
One point that, however, might have evaded the civic body group’s eyes is concerning the cross-border intrusions. The presence of the gun-wielding foreigners in the valley has succeeded in scuttling the reasonable and the logical voices of Kashmir. It is said that the kashmiris have lost their fear of India. Must be true. Afterall they know that the soldier is not authorized to shoot them (fatally) until pushed too far. However, the fear of Pak-trained terrorists cannot be denied. It is very much perceptible. Even if there are only 100 odd foreign mercenaries at a given point of time, India has to position its soldiers outside every street and at every crossing to defeat their nefarious designs. It has been a long drawn struggle and the price India is paying in blood and cash is exorbitant already. Burhan Wani alone cost us more than Rs 16,000 crores and more than a 100 lives. The costs notwithstanding India really needs to seal and fortify its boundaries. In fact this is the only investment the center can make with respect to Kashmir and expect favourable dividends in not-so-far future. The local pawns of Hafiz Saeed and Mazood Azhar will die a slow and natural death in the absence of foreign handlers, and, a healthy and smiling Kashmir might even become a reality in our lifetime.
(The views of the author are personal)
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