Kashmir’s real sangbaz

The locality in Srinagar where Massarat Aalam Bhat — who has been in the news these past few weeks — comes from is where I once used to have my home: Zaindar Mohalla. It used to be a place where the two communities lived cheek by jowl for generations. In those halcyon days, mutual sharing and caring happened naturally, even without anybody noticing it. The marriages of the daughters of some of our Muslim neighbours, for example, were performed in our house simply because it was a bigger place in an otherwise congested neighbourhood.

A stone’s throw from Zaindar Mohalla (no pun intended in view of Mr Aalam’s known expertise in organising stone-throwers!) lay Kathleshwar, which is where the Katjus had migrated from. As a child, I once witnessed K.N. Katju taking time off during an official visit as defence minister to come to see his ancestral neighbourhood. I was too young to understand what being the defence minister of India meant, but can still recall the image of a tall, achkan-clad, Gandhi-capped Katju speaking movingly of the place from where his family’s long trek to central India began.

Today, reading some of Mr Aalam’s statements scares me. It scares me to imagine how our one-time neighbourhood must have changed. And if it has, what then could be the meaning of the return and resettlement of those displaced back in their homes in the Valley that leaders in New Delhi and Srinagar keep referring to at convenient moments. Are they talking for real or just to impress each other? It is tragic that even those who keep talking of Kashmiriyat as some kind of a mantra do not fully appreciate the enormity of the task at hand.

Creating special enclaves for the migrants has become so contentious an issue that some local youth have come out on the streets. The point to ponder is: Would going back to the old neighbourhoods be an option? It is not just the restoration of these old and decrepit places that would be problematic. A far trickier issue is if it would be possible or advisable to dispossess the current occupiers of the houses the migrants had left behind. And, in that event, how does one restore or recreate the gentleness and geniality that once existed among the denizens of these neighbourhoods.

Whether Mr Aalam should be in jail or out of it is not the critical question. The issue to address is the radicalisation of youth in the Valley, which has been going on for well over three decades. Yet, radicalisation of the Valley youth — of which Mr Aalam himself is a product — need not surprise anybody. It was happening before everybody’s eyes, and yet few were inclined to do anything about it. True, it happened with overt and covert support from across the border. Addressing the Oxford Union the other day, former Inter-Services Intelligence chief Asad Durrani proudly counted creating an “uprising in Kashmir” among the major achievements of the organisation he once headed.

But that is only one part of the story. The other, more disturbing part is that it succeeded because Jammu and Kashmir’s mainstream parties (and politicians) ignored the warning signals. They did so for short-term gains, including their local constituency compulsions, while policy-makers in New Delhi were simply in denial about its negative consequences.

An Islamist/pro-Pakistan strand has been running as a sub-stream through the Kashmir discourse ever since the uprising against Maharaja Hari Singh in the Valley in the 1930s. A decade later, when Muhammad Ali Jinnah landed in Srinagar with the aim of winning the Valley for the Muslim League and the yet-to-be-born Pakistan, he was made to feel unwelcome. Sheikh Abdullah, following his ascendance to power, would not give much quarter to such elements and sent many of them packing across the ceasefire line, into the Pakistan-occupied part of Kashmir. Among those so despatched was the grand uncle of the present Mirwaiz Umar Farooq.

Since Sheikh Abdullah’s successors did not command any of his popularity or power, they could not have followed his example of summarily dismissing the secessionists. They could not even bring themselves to follow the example of Ghulam Mohammed Sadiq, the chief minister in the mid-Sixties who set out to face the separatist challenge politically and in open public fora. He managed to contain their influence at the time to a considerable extent.

A few years later it was still possible for Indira Gandhi — with G. Parthasarathy by her side — to sign the 1974 Indira-Sheikh accord. That accord, if followed up with perspicacity and wisdom, should have helped lay the basis for finding a resolution of the Kashmir issue. But the gains made in terms of the Indira-Sheikh accord were frittered away by leaders of the mainstream parties who were busy playing games against each other. Thus, the political space was left open for the separatists to occupy. That set off the process of pushing the mainstreamers to the margins. As a result, the 1974 landmark agreement was left in a limbo as if it just did not exist.

For many people in this high season of religious obscurantism, it may be hard to believe that the Communist Party of India used to be in the vanguard of the politics in Kashmir through the Forties and the Fifties. “Naya Kashmir” programme itself was crafted with help from the political left in the Valley. Later in the Sixties and even up to the early Seventies, the Congress Party had created a formidable base that was strong enough to challenge the National Conference in its fortress. But, then on, they lost the plot and were spending time running each other down, while the ground was left for the radicals to grab. Ever since, the state’s Congress leaders have been spending more time paying court in the Delhi durbar than attending to their constituents in the state.

The shenanigans that the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party played through the Eighties, of course, came with a price tag. A few years later, the results were there for all to see. If a number of local leaders were complicit in the rise of the separatists, the Centre was equally incognisant of what was happening on the ground. And each time the situation blew into a crisis, New Delhi’s approach has been of undertaking a firefighting operation, only to sit back and let things slide as before.

The current situation is further complicated by the fact that an improbable coalition of ideologically diverse players is at the helm in the state. Much of the rhetoric that the BJP and the People’s Democratic Party representatives have been spewing out has been reserved to run down each other. The high-decibel TV anchors have been having a ball with two parties more keen to pander to their regional constituencies in Jammu and the Valley rather than resolve the situation. Putting Mr Aalam or someone else behind bars cannot be a solution.

The PDP-BJP coalition needs to do three things. One, work out a politically-nuanced coherent plan to address the separatist challenge together. Second, address the problem of youth radicalisation that has taken place through all these years. A whole generation has come up in the last 25 years of high tide of militancy in the Valley. This generation has to be reclaimed. No doubt it is a tough call and a long haul. But there is no escaping the reality. And finally, stop using the security forces for cover, as the easy way out, and then blame them when things go wrong as happened in Tral and Narabal. Things are bound to go wrong in any civilian-military interface. It is high time our mainstream politicians get ready to stand up and be counted. It is not a battle that can be fought or won from the TV studios!

The writer is a journalist based in New Delhi