Chanakya Charan Dass “Tikri”
In retrospect it seems that it was! You could feel something amiss in the air and the rumblings were there for everyone to notice. The ears could hear them, but the analytics faltered.
We in J&K were continuously coming across an encounter here and an encounter there between the terrorists and the security forces. Sometimes in Kathua, Poonch, Rajouri, Akhnoor, Reasi or in Billawar and at other times in Chatru or in adjoining areas of Kishtwar District. The pattern was alarming. The casualties on part of the security forces were much more than that of the terrorists, civilians were also getting killed and their bodies found in most bizarre of the circumstances. The operations of the security forces lasted for days and sometimes weeks and generally the terrorists vanished into thin air. Some of these operations are still on as I write this piece.
The terrorists seem to have developed a pattern in Jammu area; be visible here and then elsewhere and finally escape into jungles after making their presence felt. It’s a game of attrition; a game of challenging the sovereignty of the nation. Was this a diversion to keep the security forces engaged in Jammu while they had a different plan for Kashmir?
And then Pahalgam happened on April 22nd, 2025. On this day 26tourists enjoying their holidays in the breathtakingly beautiful tourist resort of Pahalgam in the Kashmir Valley were gunned down by terrorists. Several others were injured. They were asked to identify themselves with the faith they professed and on discovering that they were Hindus or Christian they were shot and killed. A local Muslim guide also got killed in this macabre incident. Not for the faith he followed, but because he probably tried to protect his clients. There was a Christian victim too. A Hindu Professor from Assam had a narrow shave as he was able to recite “Kalma” – verse from the Holy Quran and therefore was let go by the killers. The killers killed only the male members amongst the tourists while the women and children were left wailing, crying and fending for themselves in a territory unfamiliar to them. One of the ladies, whose husband was killed right in front of her and her son’s eyes pleaded with them that they should kill both of them too, but was told scornfully that they didn’t want to kill her as she is being let off to inform Modi, the PM of India, about these macabre killings executed by them.
This is reminiscent of the incident involving BK Ganjoo in Srinagar in1989/90 when terrorists gunned him (Ganjoo) down inside his house while he was hiding in an empty rice storage drum. His wife pleaded with the terrorists that they should kill her too as she had nothing more to live in this world for, but she was brusquely told that this “relief” wouldn’t be extended to her as she needed to be kept alive to wail for her dead husband.
The carnage in Pahalgam proves and reconfirms the ideological underpinning of the terrorists and also that not much has changed over the decades.
The rumblings of the coming events were there.
The statement of Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi, (the National Conference, MP from Srinagar and a religious leader of Kashmir)about three months back had quite a meaning. He referred to the expanding tourism in Kashmir as the cultural encroachment. His words were that “what is happening right now, which is being called tourism, it’s not that in my view. This is a cultural invasion. It’s happening by purpose and by design. A particular set of people are being brought intentionally, by design and for specific activities which are executed as per cultural invasion that is currently underway in JandK, deliberately, with the aim of disturbing the environment.”He also was scornful of the dress and eating and drinking habits of the tourists.
While the Government of India & the UT Government were and are still pushing for development of tourism in J&K to boost the economy of the Kashmir Valley, the MP from Srinagar was playing a very scornful and different tune. It is a fact that the efforts of the central and the UT Governments had given an unprecedented boost to the tourism sector in the Valley over last few years.
Did someone take a cue from his statement?! It’s very difficult to tell, but there are innumerable agonistic minds in the Valley who are continuously analysing and looking for triggers for their subsequent nefarious actions!
The statement by Gen. Asif Muneer of Pakistan(during his speech to the Overseas Pakistanis Convention in Islamabad recently)that Kashmir was Pakistan’s jugular vein and that “our religion is different, our customs are different, our ambitions are different, that’s where the foundation of the two-nation-theory was laid.” Gen. Muneer is facing problems within his own country too & what better way could have been found to try to consolidate public opinion in favour of the Army is Pakistan than to create a destabilizing situation in Kashmir. This also takes us back to 1989/90 when Benazir Bhutto, as the PM of Pakistan raised the ante against India and went berserk with her vitriol on Kashmir resulting in a multiplier effect on the environment of terrorism in the Valley that eventually saw the “uprooting” of around 500,000 Kashmiri Hindus (the aboriginal residents of the Valley)by terrorists and terror sympathisers from Kashmir. She was consumed by her own vitriol and lost her life later to a terror attack is a different story.
The killing of the tourists in Pahalgam caused an unprecedented stir in the Valley and a total bandh was called against the massacre of the tourists. Was it against terrorism or loss of economy that the attack entailed is very difficult to say!!
The usually vitriolic Mehbooba Mufti, the former CM of J&K proclaimed that “she was ashamed, Kashmiris were ashamed(of this dastardly act) and that the Kashmiris stood with the people of the country in this time of pain.” She called the killings as a terrorist act(very rare for her to say that) and she apologised to the people of the country.
Same was the feeling amongst the political parties all through the UT of JandK and each and every one condemned the act of the terrorists in Pahalgam.
But herein lies the rub. Let’s examine the following:
Around middle of 2022 Rajni Bala, a schoolteacher and Rahul Bhat, a Government employee were killed in Kashmir. Similarly, two schoolteachers named Supinder Kaur and Deepak Chand were killed in mid-2021 in a school in Srinagar after their identities were confirmed. In June 2024 nine Hindu pilgrims to Vaishnav Devi were killed and 33 injured after their bus was way laid by the terrorists. In a terrorist attack near the Z-Morh tunnel in October 2024, 7 people working on the tunnel project were killed including a local Muslim doctor.
That is not all. Bodies of terror victims were found in the Chatru, Kishtwar and Billawar, Kathua area of the Jammu region. Thus, terrorism was simmering all through though the scale was smaller. In any case the scale is for statisticians. For the one who losses his/her life it is a “0” from an existential “1” in a matter of seconds, while the statisticians may make comparisons with their data in percentile terms or in any other mathematical template, they deem fit.
The point is that there have been consistent terror attacks in Jammu and Kashmir resulting in casualties to the civilian population and amongst the security forces. This means that there are terrorists roaming around freely in the Kashmir as well as Jammu region of the UT – many a times unhindered and undeterred. Which also means that they are getting local support from some of the antinational overground elements within the Union Territory.
Will the bandh call given by the political parties in the UT push these people out of their shelters and hiding spaces? The answer to this question is an emphatic no! Is the outpouring of grief over the killings based on pure economics or a genuine desire against terrorism? This too is very difficult to tell.
This question becomes central as JandK has had consistent “small scale” killings of the native residents regularly as also of those poor people from outside the UT who chose to come to Kashmir for earning their livelihood. These people were obviously not adding to the tourism economy of Kashmir and were considered dispensable; not even worth crying/wailing for.
Therefore, the political parties of the UT, especially those based in the Kashmir Valley would do better by doing a bit of soul searching. They would do better by exhorting their cadre to identify and throw up and cough up these antinational elements that are doing neither any good to the people of Kashmir Valley nor that of the Jammu region or the nation as a whole. The apologies of Mehbooba Mufti don’t mean anything in face of the continuing tragedies in JandK while the “scale and content” of the Pahalgam tragedy has been unbelievable.
The protests against the killings in Pahalgam and proclamation that ‘we are sorry’ or eulogizing a “brave person here & a brave person there” is not going to help. Putting in or planting advertisements for tourism in Kashmir and the safety of tourists may work, but this terror attack has been very brazenly executed in front of so many witnesses from across the country. At the same time so many people have lost their lives. Social media has also multiplied its impact by several notches.
The tourists “proclaiming in advertisements” and social media that they are having a nice time in Kashmir after this terror attack may or may not work. The tourists have an example of Manjunath to go by. Mrs. & Mr. Manjunath seemed to be very happy in the boat on the Dal Lake, but Mr. Manjunath lost his life in Pahalgam the very next day to a terrorist.
It’s the Kashmiris who will have to rise and take decisive action in respect of the “mischief makers/terrorists living amongst them.” They are living in their lanes and by lines, homes, “pit-bunkers” built in their land and bungalows, in their orchards and grasslands and are also getting full protection, logistic and otherwise from several individuals. How else can they survive in Kashmir?
It is for the Kashmiri leadership (political/religious), the political dispensation and the populace of Kashmir to think as to what they desire for Kashmir and Jammu (by default) in the future. Going by the overwhelming popular swell in Kashmir Valley against the Pahalgam massacre it is either today or never.
A misstep will result in Pahalgam again and again and again….(as has been happening, more specifically since 1989/90) and Kashmir leadership will have no one to blame except themselves!!Of course, Indian Government and the security forces will do everything to decapacitate the enemies of the nation again and again and again as well. The decision is that of Kashmiri leadership!!
May good sense prevail!!
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