Whatever the intricacies and nuances of the crisis in Kashmir, where young men have been dying every day in their battle with security forces, a few things are clear.
First, neither the situation nor its escalation can be blamed on another government. The Congress is not in power at the centre and nor is another party, such as the National Conference, running Jammu and Kashmir. If they were, they would have made easy targets for the BJP. Many sins have been blamed on the Congress, which is responsible for all that went wrong in the last six or so decades and cannot take credit for a few things that may have gone right, but at the moment, it is the BJP with its brute majority that runs the central government. It has been in power for two years and now must take full responsibility for governance.
MODI was supposed to be more efficient, more decisive. Simply deploying force is not decisiveness, that’s simply the use of state might to put down any dissent. That is the easy part. How to ensure the peace is the more difficult task. This government’s answer to most troubling things is to go silent and either let protestors tire themselves out, or to use disproportionate force.
The same applies to J and K, where the PDP and the BJP are in an alliance. The unusual partnership has had its ups and downs and after the death of Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, it had looked like it would come apart. But after much thinking and several rounds of confabulations, they decided to get back together. There is discomfort in both camps, since ideally PDP would not want to be associated with a right wing nationalist party and BJP hardliners think of her as sympathetic to separatists. But power is a great glue and for the moment they are sticking together.
Thus, the on the ground handling of the situation, that has now spiralled out of control, is the responsibility of local forces and while the Army is not under the command of the state government, it can certainly resort to some confidence building measures. Instead, it has been found wanting.
Which brings us to the next point— the political management of the entire episode, right from the killing of the suspected militant Burhan Wani to the subsequent violence that has left over 30 killed and hundreds injured. This has not been one of the usual ‘uprisings’, led or sponsored by a militant or separatist organisation. This was organic, if not spontaneous and an outburst that took everyone by surprise with its intensity. This was sheer anger against the Indian state.
But it could have been contained, if not curtailed. Right from the beginning, the response of the state has been to use direct and strong force. Forget healing touch, there was no sign of political maturity in trying to douse the fires. When governments start looking like they are caught in the headlights, they come off as indifferent.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in Africa, drumming up the diaspora and offering help to the Africans. Well and good, but what does a leader do when there is a major crisis at home? President Obama rushed back from Spain, where no US President had gone for 15 years, after the shootings in Dallas, where five police officers were shot dead. No one expected Modi to come back – he was on a diplomatic mission – but there was no public sign of sympathy or concern for what was happening in Kashmir from him. He is quick to tweet on all kinds of things and the Ministry of External Affairs was doing an efficient job of giving us updates of his programme. Thus we saw him travelling on a train to Pietermaritzburg where Gandhi was thrown out over a century ago and after that, drumming in Tanzania. But on Kashmir, nothing. Other Prime Ministers used to take the media with them and talk to them regularly during a tour. Narendra Modi travels only with the official media and they are not likely to ask him any questions he does not want to answer.
The end result was that we heard nothing from the travelling Prime Minister and in his absence, nothing from his ministers, who apparently believe in the adage ‘Silence is Golden’. Whether this was the reason there was no visible action or decision, no one can say but it certainly contributed to the perception of a government without a plan.
Politics is not just about elections and caste equations, but about handling of difficult situations. It is not as if this kind of violence has not happened in the past and no one will argue that the Congress was any better at it. But, the Congress’ oft-mentioned failures are what brought this government in. Modi was supposed to be more efficient, more decisive. Simply deploying force is not decisiveness, that’s simply the use of state might to put down any dissent. That is the easy part. How to ensure the peace is the more difficult task. This government’s answer to most troubling things is to go silent and either let protestors tire themselves out, or to use disproportionate force. A student protest in one university has to be put down not by negotiations but by slapping sedition charges. Similarly, protests in Kashmir have to be quelled by shooting protestors.
The curfew has quietened things down but things are simmering. Even those who were not particularly militant must be angry at the needless deaths of so many people. On the social media, images are making people angry beyond the borders of Kashmir; this government is losing the PR battle. All is not lost but it will be an uphill climb to apply the balm of peace. For that, there has to be the will to do it, and one is not sure if this government has that will.
