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More provocation and no healing

Kashmir Times. Dated: 4/30/2017 11:46:07 PM

Centre's duplicity and its rigid posturing with emphatic no to dialogue and creation of more military battalions will further deepen the chaos

When women and girls joined stone pelters on the streets last week, marking this year's defining image of Kashmir, the central government instead of grappling with the ground reality of the exacerbated levels of frustration and seriously thinking of changing its strategy has instead followed the old beaten path of intensifying the militarization of civilian space in the Valley. Special women battalions will now be constituted to tackle the women joining the rank and file of street agitationists and more police battalions as well as recruitment drives of Special Police officers are on the anvil. Such steps are not only likely to be futile in taming the anger and submitting people into silence and subjugation. It can have counter-productive results and prove to be more detrimental to the interests of restoring calm in the strife-torn Valley. Such moves of further inflating the size of the police force are being seen in Kashmir as the Ikhwanisation of the Valley and are likely to further add fuel to the existing fire. The Kashmir Valley is slipping into deeper chaos not only because of the suffocating atmosphere that people find themselves in or because the lack of space of expression pushes them towards violent forms of agitation. The Valley continues to deteriorate also because voices for initiating the much needed process of engagement with the alienated people of the valley are met with denial and stiff opposition of the Centre and the state government's inability to play a stronger role in acting as a bridge between Kashmir and New Delhi. Recently, when chief minister Mehbooba Mufti met the prime minister with the plea of starting a dialogue and providing concessions for easing the atmosphere, the Centre responded with the plan of intensifying militarization. The dialogue proposal stands in complete disarray with first Centre's Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi saying in unequivocal terms that the Centre can open talks only with recognized political groups, not with separatists or anybody else. The same sentiment found resonance in the words of New Delhi's pointsman in Kashmir, Ram Madhav, who ruled out any possibility of talks with Kashmiri separatists, accusing them of playing politics of sentiments over dead bodies. His views are significant as they reveal Centre's one point agenda of trying to treat Kashmir as a simple law and order problem that it feels should be crushed militarily. Besides, such a notion is out of sync with the idea of talks mooted by BJP's alliance partner in Jammu and Kashmir.
Such an ideology is out of touch with reality and the known practices in conflict resolution. Dialogues are meant to be channels of negotiations between parties that do not agree with each other not with people who are already in agreement. That seems to be the basic flaw in the discourse emanating from New Delhi. This attitude and response throws up the vital question - how legitimate and effective would a dialogue be with recognized political groups which already believe in the status quo of the political shape of Jammu and Kashmir? Besides, it completely holds its own alliance partner as a suspect and amounts to shunning the latter's advice with virtual contempt. Thirdly, there is complete duplicity in the argument being propped by Ram Madhav, who in one breath has given an ultimatum to the state government to restore calm within three months as a prelude to talks and in yet another stroke has said an emphatic no to any meaningful process of engagement. It is foolish to expect New Delhi to earn any bit of credibility or confidence of the local population in Kashmir with such a lack of clarity that hinges on absolute rigidity. Rather than calming the situation, such an attitude is likely to be a cause of greater provocation, juxtaposed as it is with the un-countered remarks of other Hindutva constituents like Praveen Togadia who wants Kashmir to be carpet bombed.