Changing treatise of violence in Kashmir

Arun Joshi

When a gentleman-separatist Mirwaiz Umar Farooq seeks refuge in promoting the terrorism narrative, then it is time to think and ponder over the situation. I call him gentleman for he had been decrying violence so far and believed in the art of talks to deliver solution. His speech on Friday at Jamia Masjid in Srinagar was quite a contrast of what he had been advocating so far — peace and dialogue. This time he warned that Delhi will have to face 10 militants, if it kills one.

On the face of it, he was telling that the hardcore sentiment of secession and the willingness of the youth to do or die would sharpen if peace and change of heart was expected out of the bullet for bullet policy. Clearly, he was declaring that the forces seeking peace and solution would succeed only when the optimism is not seen though the barrel of a gun.

Analysed from another angle, a pure Indian prism, this statement would get translated into the pinch that the militants and their supporters, like his own Hurriyat Conference, feel after incessant anti-terrorism operations in which many top commanders of the militant outfits got killed, particularly in south Kashmir. It could also be related to the pressure that the NIA raids have brought to the separatist camp.

Having said that, we need to understand who is Mirwaiz Umar Farooq? Is he the same man who had denounced violence and told the mothers, sisters, wives of the militants from Manshera, Pakistan, that why were they sending their children on harm’s way. Is it the same person who decreed, “guns and violence would bring no peace and solution but only graveyards” and that too from the soil of Pakistan. That was in January 2007, when the Government of India was seeking its own ways to find a solution by addressing internal and external dimension of Kashmir. That formula was envisaged by the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Srinagar in May 2006 after he was disillusioned by the separatists’ flip-flop on the dialogue issue.

The Government of India had changed the course after the Vajpayee era ended in 2004 and the new Congress government was unable to succeed from where to pick threads.

The separatist leadership was cornered by the militant groups who did everything to kill the prospects of dialogue. Militants killed Mirwaiz’s uncle Mushtaq Ahmad, hurled grenades at his Nageen residence and burnt down his family-run school. Pakistan scared the Hurriyat Conference like anything and left it squirming.

Mirwaiz understood the game, but he could not summon the courage to come out of the corners of fear. He refused to believe that the GoI could deliver something and save him, while his fear of Pakistan was real. He had seen the killing capabilities of theirs within the family.

But the brazen promotion of militancy as he did last Friday was unexpected. More militants mean more violence. He, perhaps, underlined the point that bullets cannot kill the sentiment. That means that the leadership revels in their exhortation to youth to rise in arms, sending a message to the security forces that they would fall short of the bullets as the militants would outnumber them.

Does blood-letting open a door for dialogue to settle the Kashmir issue? If so, then Delhi cannot be faulted for adopting hard approach against militants. The fact, however, is that no violent movement can be justified as a peaceful struggle. Bullets cannot end the war. His words should lead to serious thinking in all quarters as to where Kashmir is being pushed to, and why.

Meanwhile, Mirwaiz has dwarfed his own leadership when contrasted to his high moral ground of pursuing dialogue to solution as a matter of process. He has shifted gears from the long-drawn process to instant solutions through bullets. That is not going to happen, he knows it better.