When Pakistan tries to keep the pot boiling in Kashmir, its malicious intent must be countered with vigour. It is an unsatiated state that is trying to grab the territory, using the bogus argument that it has a proprietary right over a Muslim-majority area. But what’s to be said when India — on account of the maladroit actions of its government — ends up creating an unstable and volatile situation in Kashmir, playing right into Islamabad’s hands? The recent Valley-wide violence in Kashmir erupted after the security forces killed a young commander of the pro-Pakistan terror outfit Hizbul Mujahideen, Burhan Wani, who had gained Valley-wide popularity through the clever use of social media, a propaganda tool used to great effect by jihadi outfits worldwide, particularly the Islamic State and Al Qaeda.
On this basis the BJP, which runs the Centre and is in a coalition government with Mehbooba Mufti’s People’s Democratic Party in Kashmir, is trying to project itself as a political force that is alive to its nationalist responsibility. It has exchanged hostile words with Pakistan and has stuck to the narrative that the violent unrest seen in the Valley since Wani’s death on July 8 was the handiwork of Pakistan and its proxies. This is an artificial narrative. It is also an artifice to camouflage the communal agenda unleashed in the Valley whose bitter fruit the country is now harvesting. It is an entirely self-serving and inaccurate projection to conceal how matters have shaped in Kashmir since the PDP-BJP government came into being in March 2015.
Looking at the facts, it is evident that the initial violence after Wani’s killing was spontaneous, a sui generis development. Islamabad began to meddle through propaganda interventions, and fish in troubled waters in other ways, after the lapse of a few days — not right away. While misguiding the country, the Centre and the state government are refusing to see that what’s confronting us is a pervasive mood of popular dissatisfaction in Kashmir that is akin to the rumblings of an incipient insurgency. If the causes of alienation that has built up in recent times are not addressed, and strong-arm methods continue to be used against the populace as a whole, instead of taking the bull by the horns and getting down to serious political engagement, we cannot get the tactics right to deal with the situation.
A lot of hope had been invested in the PDP-BJP government by the people of Kashmir but these were dashed to the ground by the constant communal needling that the BJP has engaged in since coming into government in the state, instead of seeking to build political capital for itself in the Muslim-majority Valley in the way that Atal Behari Vajpayee did as Prime Minister. The BJP’s political campaigns in the state took care to focus attention on themes that were aimed to show that the so-called Hindu interests would be highlighted.
A perverse reading was sought to be imposed that defending the perceived Hindu interests in J&K automatically meant defending the country’s interests — in fact, playing on the subliminal thought among many that Hindus and Muslims have separate interests. (This is exactly the way of thinking that brought about Pakistan.) Beef politics was kept alive for weeks. When a misguided “beef party” was held by a Valley MLA, Engineer Rashid, to get even with the BJP for its high-decibel cow politics in the rest of the country, the saffron party’s state bosses saw red. No one told them that the episode involving the independent MLA was a bait and that the Kashmiri Muslim wasn’t even a beef-eater traditionally.
Then the pseudo-politics of nationalism came to be played out in J&K, taking off from developments in JNU in the course of which Union home minister Rajnath Singh made an assertion that was shown to be false, that the involvement of a Kashmiri young man at a JNU protest action was inspired by Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Tayyaba mentor Hafiz Sayed. In this period, the shouting of pro-Pakistan slogans by some Kashmiri boys at the Regional Engineering College in Srinagar came to the fore. All hell broke loose. The event was converted into a Hindu-Muslim issue. The Kashmir police was substituted on the campus by the Central Reserve Police Force, as if the latter was a force that reflected “Hindu India”.
Besides corrupting and polluting the political atmosphere, developments such as these harmed not just the Centre’s but India’s reputation in the Valley, where only a small section of opinion is deemed to be pro-Pakistan. All meaningful work was neglected while politics around an explicit communal agenda dominated the landscape. It appeared that since the BJP had won all its seats from Hindu-dominated Jammu, the party was trying to pander to the “Hindu vote” in Jammu. Ms Mufti and her party became worried onlookers, as disgust with the BJP began to take hold amongst the populace, and with her for allying with the BJP. This began to get translated into an anti-India sentiment which was sought to be fanned by the separatist quarters.
Massive floods had ravaged Kashmir, particularly the ancient and throbbing city of Srinagar and all of South Kashmir, in September 2014, months before the election that brought the PDP-BJP coalition. An important consideration for the PDP going with the BJP was the expectation that financial assistance for flood relief would flow if the regional party was aligned with the Centre. But a less than paltry '2,000 crores has been allotted so far to mitigate flood-related damage, when the need was for around Rs 100,000 crores.
The mood among the people had turned grim and sullen long before the Burhan Wani killing, which as an event acted as a catalyst — no more. Besides doing little on the development front, the government failed on the political and security front. The Pakistani infiltration this year is reportedly 200 per cent higher than in 2014, and there has been no move from the Centre to take the Valley people into a fold of constructive politics — a trend continuing since the time of Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao. It is dangerous that Kashmir has been left adrift at a time when China and Pakistan have been holding joint patrols in the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) area.
