Kashmir after Ramzan

Wajahat Habibullah

It is a fact that the first 15 days of the ceasefire in the Valley were a success: violence receded both within the State and along the LoC; recruitment to the ranks of terrorists within Kashmir tapered down; DGMOs of India and Pakistan met and agreed to resuscitate the foundering ceasefire agreement. But the latter half took a turn for the worst, climaxing on the eve of Eid in the bloodshed of June 14. June 15 was Jummatul Vida, the farewell Friday of Ramzan. This year it marked the farewell to Shujaat Bukhari and Aurangzeb, and to the glimmer of hope that had briefly illuminated the tunnel of spiralling violence. 

The life of Shujaat, editor of Rising Kashmir, was extinguished brutally, and altogether unexpectedly, as he stepped out of his office after sharing iftar with his colleagues on the evening of June 14. With him died his two PSOs, both Kashmiris. Almost simultaneously, the strapping young Aurangzeb, a rifleman of 44 Rashtriya Rifles hailing from the border district of Poonch, who had proceeded on leave to celebrate Eid with his family, was abducted in Pulwama district, tortured and killed. So it has come to this. Kashmiri against Kashmiri, Indian against Indian in a state once dreamt of as the glittering jewel of India, embedded in her crowning Himalayas.

Much has been written about the whys and wherefores of this outrage. The country, including Kashmir’s separatists, amidst accusations of having been party to the crime, has mourned the deaths. The irony is that the rifleman, a Gujjar from Salani village of Mendhar tehsil in Poonch, hails from the district where the mutiny of Poonchi troops, demobilised from the British Indian army in 1947, had triggered the tribal invasion launched by Pakistan’s military. Today, Aurangzeb has paid with his life for soldiering for India, while terrorists that had murdered Shujaat were most likely Kashmiri, a people who had risen to a man to resist Pakistani invaders in 1947. How the wheel of history has turned. But although residents of the Valley generally feel that the ceasefire had brought relief, elsewhere, because of these tragedies, there has been a reaction across the board that the ceasefire had failed, and was even a mistake.

We must then reflect on what the ceasefire had hoped to achieve, and what it actually resulted in.

The ceasefire initiative, laudable as it was, was a political initiative. It can hardly be considered to have been a well-thought-out strategic step because it was accompanied by no strategic move, only platitudes of somehow generating goodwill. Vague offers of talks with separatists without specifics on what was to be talked of and the unsure response of separatists — in no control of the pervasive violence — can hardly be described as strategy. There was no endeavour by the political leadership to reach out to the local social groups to argue the case of the government, partly because no case had been made out. Former CM Omar Abdullah was liberal with his tweets but these were not conversations with a society prolific on social media. And the flurry of violence at the close of Ramzan, which should have been expected because it was inevitable that a vested interest would resent a successful ceasefire, brought the virtual dismissal of the Mehbooba government through the simple mechanism of the BJP withdrawing support. 

The day after the dismissal a sense of relief was palpable in the Valley, indicating that the Mufti government, the first-ever in the state to have been led by a woman, had squandered the support it had marshalled in the 2015 elections. The limp efforts of the BJP in public debate to exonerate itself from this loss of popularity was amusing, but the Government of India was swift in appointing new office-bearers in the Governor’s administration who were selected with immaculate credentials. 

While the political leadership was rife with activity, life for the Kashmiris went on. The placid ambience of Kashmir’s daily life was typified by the mela Kheer Bhawani, one of the two most important Kashmiri Pandit festivals, celebrated annually in Ganderbal district, with parallel celebrations at Kupwara in north Kashmir to Devsar, Kulgam in the south. The festival was attended by Pandits from across the state, the bulk being from among the émigrés from Jammu, for whom the state government had arranged 70 subsidised busses, with 10 more paid for by the government transporting Pandits from Delhi. 

The atmosphere at the mela was celebratory with much to and fro of visitors even as the festival came to a close with a bustling cross-section of Kashmiri society, including Muslim and Sikh families, relishing the savouries — the disposal of waste being markedly inadequate notwithstanding posters of Swacch Bharat — and dallying with friends. The Hurriyat had cooperated by deliberately postponing planned hartals. The organisers acknowledged the attendance at Kheer Bhawani this year to have been the highest in decades.

Driving back to Srinagar past tourist destinations along the Foreshore road encircling the Dal Lake, holidaying crowds, most of whom were locals, could be seen cavorting everywhere, especially around the fabled Mughal Gardens, hardly in keeping with the image of a state in crisis. 

But even as Governor NN Vohra exhorted his officers to act judiciously and with good sense in their dealings with the public, eliminating collateral damage in volatile encounters, newspapers blared how the government was stepping up security measures in the state. Since Operation All Out was already maximal this was a curious claim. It has been readily demonstrated over the past three years that higher terrorist mortality has, contrary to expectations, led to young men from a cross-section of Kashmiri society, from the well-heeled to the humbler sections, opting to throw aside the prospects of a peaceful life and taking to terrorism, which they are misled into perceiving as jihad. Surely, it must be clear that alternatives to a ‘muscular’ approach can, and must be, sought in the situation existing in Kashmir. The answer lies in inducting the youth in the quest for development. The ambience in the Valley, even with the enveloping fear that characterises Kashmir today, is still possible. By seizing that possibility we will ennoble the sacrifice of men like Shujaat into martyrdom for a higher cause.

First Chief Information Commissioner of India