The Amarnath aftermath

The reverberations from the Amarnath attack on innocent pilgrims will be felt for some time to come. The incident still has the potential to rearrange political equations or herald an intensified crackdown in Jammu & Kashmir. It also has enough communal fuel to singe mainland India where societal relations are already under significant stress. But the political mainstream, or considerable parts of it, and the civil society have saved the day. The overground Kashmiri separatists, consistently at odds with the Delhi establishment, were quick to condemn the attack. The state Chief Minister, Mehbooba Mufti, and her predecessor, Omar Abdullah, made a clear distinction between the forces which masterminded the attack and the civilians of Jammu & Kashmir by stating that the incident caused Kashmiris to hang their head in shame.

PM Modi's commiserations did not reveal his mind nor break any new ground but Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh’s obeisance to the notion of Kashmiriyat was heartening, especially when he took on a right-wing social media activist to assert that a scorched earth policy could not be the solution because all Kashmiris are not terrorists. Such voices of reason would help serve as a counterpoise to the rather simplistic notion emanating from the middle-level RSS functionaries of putting the state under President’s rule and handing over all security functions to the Army. The hard fact is that the externally abetted strain was responsible for the Amarnath outrage.

But despite audacious acts of indiscriminate violence as its calling card, it has a very limited capacity to alter the state structure and no appetite for dialogue. This makes it crucial to avoid marginalising forces seeking a redress of the current balance of power between the Centre and the state. The clear line drawn by mainstream politicians, especially from Jammu & Kashmir, that they have no love lost for the perpetrators of the Amarnath attack could be creatively utilised to reduce the trust deficit levels in the Valley. Managing the level of violence could be considered an achievement in an environment where dialogue in the near future is a tough task because of the Centre’s hard-man approach.