Rethink Kashmir

Developments of the past few weeks have not only brought the situation in Kashmir once again to boil but have kept it boiling without much respite. First, people’s expectations were unreasonably heightened about what may come to them as reconstruction package to rebuild their homes and businesses torn apart by September 2014 floods ‘once they participated in elections and chose a new responsive government’. Indeed people were rushed through the elections only on the hopes of post-flood relief and rehabilitation packages. But all these promises didn’t materialize, nor is there any hope of anything substantive coming from New Delhi to help the deluge-hit people of Kashmir any time soon. The obvious fallout of this is that people feel let-down. While much of their anger is actually directed at New Delhi for its “discriminatory” attitude, a good degree of it is also targeted at the local government. The reason being that the state government is a coalition government whose one partner happens to be the party which rules the Centre (BJP) and which was seen as the only favourable condition for regional PDP to forge an alliance with it. The hope was the BJP government at the Centre would open the strings of its purse to help rebuild Kashmir since the party was, for the first time, part of a coalition government in the state. Nothing of the sort has happened thus far. So PDP certainly is on the back-foot, for none of the hopes it had nursed about its alliance with BJP, seem bearing fruits. Instead what it has got is the anger and frustration of the general population.

All this anger and alienation which very frequently outpours on the roads and streets here has blown up to nothingness whatever was left of the so-called ‘CHANGE’ because New Delhi is refusing to change its mindset vis-a-vis Kashmir. The irony is that it wants the people to believe that it can bring ‘peace’ to the troubled Kashmir and that too without actually conceding anything to the people of Kashmir!

It is this arrogant complacence that is the real culprit and obviously those responsible for having made it into a state policy are equally blameworthy. The large amount of external scapegoating as well as the tailoring of otherwise ramshackle evidence in a bid to slam the blame on external elements and non-state actors within for every trouble in Kashmir is just a ploy to save face and justify repressive tactics in the state response. The political leadership at New Delhi has over the years perfected the art of being in perpetual mode of denial when it comes to the events in Kashmir. They know that whatever happens in Kashmir can be and should be slammed on “forces across the border” and they have been doing it successfully. Unfortunately, they couldn’t do this with the floods of September 2014.

While the tactic of blaming Pakistan for troubles in Kashmir works with the domesticated domestic audiences in India, which is the political constituency New Delhi actually caters to and worries about; in case of floods it did not have such a privilege. Here the responsibility of helping people lay squarely with it. For this people were told vote for ‘change’, which actually they did, but Delhi, living up to its reputation, chose to renege on its pledges and responsibilities. The immediate fallout of this line of action is that it is blind to the realities on the ground in Kashmir. With everybody singing in chorus denying the anger and frustration of the Kashmiri people, the state tactics only add to the confusion at the top, which then translates into more suffering for the people of ‘flesh and blood’ in the streets of Kashmir.

While there is an eerie calm in Kashmir, the popular anger is far from being calmed. Amid the prevailing turbulence, for which governments have no one but itself to blame, the unfortunate part is that a renewed reign of unbridled violence (including its threat) has been let loose on the people of Kashmir. Even as the governments have numerous ways and means of dealing with or containing the public anger and unrest, it seems to have made up its mind to let the situation dither. Had it not been so, then certainly the situation would have been different. Irony is that the government which itself provoked crises here instead of acknowledging its follies and failures is slamming blames on the people of Kashmir.