The politics of freeing stone-throwers

Arun Joshi 

On Wednesday, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti asked the state police to identify the root cause of the militancy and fix responsibility for the same. Then, without mincing words, she admonished all those making boastful claims that with the killing of nearly 200 militants the militancy was tottering in Kashmir.

Mehbooba Mufti made this significant statement to showcase herself as the one who has always stood for addressing the Kashmir issue through dialogue and not by the gun. More significant were the timing and the occasion — she was addressing policemen.

Till then, she and her People's Democratic Party had been maintaining that the "rigged Assembly elections in 1987 were at the root cause of the armed militancy in Kashmir." Simultaneously, she used to blame the then National Conference government headed by Farooq Abdullah for having committed this sin and forcing the "youth to lose faith in democratic institutions." 

A frequently heard point was that had the Farooq Abdullah government in elections not cheated Mohammad Yusuf, alias Syed Salaha-ud-Din, he would not have become a militant. Salaha-ud-Din is currently based in Pakistan and works at the behest of Pakistan's deep state as chief of the United Jihad Council that guides militancy operations in the Valley. He had contested the March 1987 Assembly polls as a candidate of the Muslim United Front from the Amira Kadal constituency of Srinagar city.

It is not clear now whether she has some other causes of militancy in her mind. Or whether the dynamics of militancy had changed and a new cause surfaced. Since she did not elaborate, there is no clue what she had in mind and what was the objective of trusting this investigation to the police which itself is viewed with suspicion in the state.

She was also magnanimous in announcing that she has ordered the withdrawal of cases against 4,327 youth involved in 744 cases of creating a law and order situation from 2008 to 2014 and she would withdraw more cases against all the first-time offenders from 2015 to 2017. She described it as healing touch.

As most of the period covered by her decision of withdrawal of the cases pertains to the time (January 2009 to January 2015), the political element was very clear. In a way, she was telling the people that she had undone the cases filed against stone-throwers by the Omar Abdullah government. 

Omar reacted furiously, saying that the decision was "taken by the Centre and she simply signed it." It is debatable whether Mehbooba did as she claimed that she started the process soon after assuming the chair of Chief Minister on April 4, 2016, or the Centre asked for it after the people petitioned Home Minister Rajnath Singh during his visits to Kashmir last year. There is a good deal of politics involved in it.

There are a few unanswered questions regarding the trigger of the law and order situation in June 2008 — neither Mehbooba Mufti nor Omar Abdullah can shrug off their responsibility for this, the time when the phrase "Hindu India versus Kashmir Muslim" gained currency. The PDP was in the coalition government when the Cabinet took the decision to divert 100 acres of land at Baltal for building facilities for Amarnath pilgrims. And, it was the first to raise the objection to the decision after separatists made an issue out of it. The PDP withdrew from the government on June 28, two days earlier than its deadline of June 30. The then Congress CM Ghulam Nabi Azad stepped down without facing a vote of confidence on July 1 but not before rescinding the order of diversion of land to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board. That led to the start of a counter-agitation in Jammu and then yet another counter-agitation in the Valley when Omar, Mehbooba, Geelani, Mirwaiz and others appeared on the same page, ridiculing the Jammu people and telling them to "go and take your two and a half districts (implying that Hindus of Jammu plains could part from rest of the Muslim majority parts of the state)." 

There is also the story of the 2010 agitation, which Omar, as a clever politician, blamed on a fake encounter in Machil, Kupwara in April that year, though the stone-pelting had resumed in March-April 2009 when the parliamentary elections were held. Mehbooba too knows the truth about who glamorised the stone-throwers and who backed them with money and with what purpose. "The idea was to dislodge the Omar Abdullah government," as National Conference leaders underlined to underscore the point that the PDP had not reconciled to its loss of power in the November-December 2008 Assembly polls. 

The fear of future politics on this issue, which has raised many questions and which remain unanswered can derail the process of dialogue and reconciliation that has been initiated by the Centre. That's the dominant fear because the questions would never be answered for the simple reason that that would expose the real face of the political players in Kashmir. 

[email protected]