A new divide threatens to hit Delhi’s outreach to Kashmir

Arun Joshi

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Tribune News Service

A new psychological Berlin wall is being built in Kashmir, separating it from the rest of the country, invoking anything and everything that widens the distrust between the two.

What is coming to the fore is that Kashmir should be exclusively Muslim – which it is – and Delhi should stop all its attempts to reach out to the people here even if it means generating employment and bringing health facilities to their doorsteps. The conspiracy theory is woven in pointing towards the “machinations” of Delhi in extending its role into the state of affairs in Jammu and Kashmir.

Those engaged in provoking anti-India sentiments have made a common cause irrespective of the their pronounced divergent ideologies as they have developed a vested interest in destabilising Kashmir this summer again. Separatists are doing it as per their preset agenda, the National Conference has jumped on the bandwagon to avenge the humiliation it faced in the parliamentary and Assembly elections in 2014 – that is the view of the leading ruling party PDP. “The NC has not reconciled to its electoral debacle two years ago,” PDP spokespersons have stated time and again. The PDP, however, is wary of taking on the separatists directly. Instead, it talks about “forces trying to destabilise the situation” because the party itself is seen as a pedlar of soft separatism in Kashmir, no matter it is ruling the state in alliance with the right-wing BJP.

The hardline faction of the Hurriyat Conference group led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani touched extremes when it saw a design to change the Muslim majority character in the setting up of new medical colleges in the state as non-local students too would be admitted to these institutions like the National Institute of Technology, Srinagar, where non-Kashmiri students outnumber the natives. The group said it would not “hesitate to make sacrifices to defend Kashmir’s special status even if it means launching an agitation during the tourist season.” It did not explain how the hospitals associated with medical colleges would benefit the non-locals, when almost 99.9 per cent of the Valley population is that of Kashmiri Muslims. That Amarnath pilgrimage also falls during the tourist season explains the threat to derail the tourist season.

The National Conference that ruled the state for most of the time since Independence has marshalled all its resources to defend the “special status of the state against all the onslaughts by Delhi” as it fears that the PDP-BJP government is all out to undermine it.

The party has picked up the threat to the special status more as a revenge theme against the PDP, which was an active partner in the 2010 unrest against the Omar Abdullah government. When the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government did not take cognisance of the autonomy resolution passed by the state legislature on July 1, 2000, there was a lot of fuming but ultimately the NC stayed on as part of the government at the Centre till 2002. Omar was a junior minister in the BJP-led coalition government at the Centre.

Omar and Farooq Abdullah have made a common cause with Geelani and moderate Hurriyat chief Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and others of that ilk on issues, including the composite townships for migrant Kashmiri Pandits, National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test, setting up of new medical colleges and proposal for a colony for permanent resident ex-servicemen in the Valley, to corner the Mehbooba Mufti government.

None of these elements have listened to the assertions of the Chief Minister that nothing of this sort is happening. The utterances of some of the BJP leaders, particularly Subramanian Swamy, are being cited as an evidence of the designs of the BJP in Kashmir. The BJP leaders’ claim that “Article 370 will go by 2017” has made the position of Mehbooba as head of the coalition government with the BJP quite vulnerable.

Such statements push Mehbooba to a corner, and may result in her seeking an exit route by adopting a line that would be more extreme in nature. That will add to the mortar and bricks of the new wall dividing Kashmir and the rest of the country.

She has dropped many hints that the Centre is better advised to stick to the agreed terms and conditions with regard to the special position of Jammu and Kashmir in the Indian union. When she said the Centre should adhere to the PDP-BJP Agenda of Alliance, she was actually making a reference to this.

The real danger, which the Centre doesn’t seem to realise, is that if the Kashmir summer of 2016 relives the 2008 and 2010 street violence, the whole edifice of the mainstream would collapse in which everyone having even an iota of hope against hope from Delhi would get consumed.

Pakistan cannot wish for anything more than this.