Perspective –
All the fears and apprehensions that were being expressed over the last few years about the situation in Kashmir deteriorating, about the inroads made by Islamic radicals in society, about youth getting influenced by jihadist trends sweeping Muslim societies, about Pakistani agent provocateurs operating with virtual impunity accorded to them by political correctness, opportunism, duplicitousness and apologism, seem to be coming true. To not put too fine a point on it, the situation in Kashmir is very bad, and is being made worse by feckless and timid governance which is based more on wishful thinking than on hard-nosed appreciation of the reality on the ground. Things are likely to worsen because of a reluctance to take the tough measures required to crackdown on the arsonists, terrorists and separatists, which in turn is empowering them to browbeat rest of the society into submission and worse, force them to follow their lead.
The civil administration, dysfunctional and unresponsive at best of times, has virtually ceased to exist. The police has been forced (by the state government) to abdicate its responsibilities and has practically abandoned the police stations. As it is the police, which had done fabulous work, has been left in the lurch by the state government which feels that targeting police officers will satisfy the blood lust of murderous mobs of jihadists and help to restore normalcy in the state. Police officers and their families are on the one hand being targeted by name by secessionists, and on the other hand are being punished by the government which is transferring effective police officers and replacing them with complicit and compromised ones. The Central Police Forces are demoralised by the lack of clear directions. They are being told to bear abuses and keep their heads down and not react if stones are pelted at them. Only in case of imminent danger to their lives can they react and respond. Basically, they are reduced to sitting ducks before those taking pot-shots at them. How this undermines the authority of the state is unfolding before our eyes.
The Army too has been told to exercise restraint. But what is worse are the hare-brained ideas that clueless babus come up with, including making joint parties comprising units of local police, CRPF and army (the last for its deterrence value) to handle crowds. Not only will this completely destroy the cohesion and coherence of the Army and reduce it into another police force, it will also severely undermine the effectiveness of the army as the force of last resort. Meanwhile, the formidable intelligence machinery is also slowly atrophying. This is a natural outcome of the interplay of what has been outlined above. At the state and national level, there is no clarity of action and purpose, much less the realisation that ambivalent positions and ambiguous statements aren’t helping matters. Needless hair-splitting – the terrorist Burhan Wani should have been captured (as though that was any guarantee that what is happening today wouldn’t happen), or that we should talk to the ‘angry youth’ (who will you talk to, has anyone been identified, what will you talk to with a 15 or 17-year-old stone pelter) – has further confounded the situation.
Clearly, the unrest in Kashmir isn’t going to end anytime soon. In a sense, the clock has turned back 25 years when all hell broke loose in Jammu and Kashmir. This wasn’t entirely unexpected because some analysts had predicted at that time that by the time the first round is over, there will be a new generation ready to take to arms. The mistake that the Indian state made was that once the situation stabilised in Kashmir almost ten years back, they slowly but surely took their eye off the ball, imagining that henceforth all would be well. But the strategists on the other side were changing, recalibrating their tactics and strategy. They kept the pot on simmer and kept poisoning the brew in small doses – the indoctrination, the infiltration of anti-India elements in the civil service, police and even among judicial officers, civil society, teachers, clerics and what have you. That potent mix is now ready to blow up once again.
And yet, bad as the situation is, it is much better than what happened in the early 1990s. Even though the civil administration has buckled under like in the 1990s, there are a lot of other things that are different this time. For one, India isn’t bankrupt, and therefore susceptible to pressure, as it was in the early 1990s when it had to go to the IMF, mortgage its gold etc. For another, the political unrest of the early 1990s – Mandir-Mandal agitations and rioting, government’s falling, minority government in power etc. – no longer obtains. For a third, India’s profile in the world is very different today than what it was a quarter century ago. The Indian economic, political and diplomatic clout insulates it much more today than it did 25 years ago. Fourthly, the international community has a better understanding of the phenomenon of Islamic radicalism and terrorism, as also of cross-border terrorism and the dubious Pakistani role not just in Kashmir but also in Afghanistan, than what it did in the 1990s. The sort of ivory-towered approach that the West had back then has been rudely shaken by the acts of Islamist terror groups in Europe and the US. The destruction wrought by Islamists in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen has left no appetite for another Syria in Kashmir, much as the deracinated Indian liberals (who are allergic to the very Idea of India) and their jihadist cohorts may want an Islamic State in Kashmir. Finally, while in the 1990s the Indian state had to struggle to re-establish its authority, today all elements of state authority are in place and all they need is clear direction and backing to bring things under control.
The Indian state, society and political class needs to gird itself for the long haul in Kashmir. Any temporary lull, if at all, will be only that and should not lull India into complacence. The security agencies now need to be prepared for a new round of terrorism. The nature of new terrorism in Kashmir will be quite different from the past when it was more about gun-toting terrorists who were being hunted down. Now it is likely to be more suicide bombings and IED attacks. But this form of terrorism requires a network, which can be busted only with the help of intelligence and police. This means that the police will have to be given backing. More importantly, rotten apples in the police and among judicial officers will have to be removed. What is more, stuff that goes into making IEDs will have to be strictly regulated. Alongside, politicians will have to speak clearly and unambiguously and shed the sort of running-with-the-hare-hunting-with-the-hound doublespeak they indulge in. Political point scoring and criticism is perfectly fine, provided it is done with the purpose of correcting the mistakes made by the government. Unfortunately, the opposite is the case.
Most importantly, India will need to have clarity about what the problem really is in Kashmir. Unless we seriously believe that a 15-year-old stone-pelter or a 20-year-old gun-wielding terrorist knows what exactly he is fighting for, and we delude ourselves that it’s a fight for jobs and economic development, we need to wake up and understand that much of what is happening is not driven by what happens in this life, but more by what happens in the after-life. This is the ideological underpinning driving the Islamist agenda in Kashmir, and unless this is challenged and defeated, there will be no solution in Kashmir. Economics is at best a necessary condition for restoring normalcy in Kashmir; it is by no means a sufficient condition. The biggest challenge for the Indian state isn’t so much the security threat as it is changing the narrative – and no, please don’t think Doordarshan can do this, or some government scheme can do this – and demolish the fake propaganda of the other side. This can be done not by existing government structures but by a more amorphous, non-hierarchical, diffused structure. But if
