Author: Ajay Chrungoo
Publication: Vijayvaani.com
Date: November 9, 2011
URL: http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=2043
Two recent incidents in the Kashmir valley
reveal the viciousness of the situation. Local newspapers reported that on
1 July 2011, Havaldar J.S. Adhikari and Lance Naik Devender Singh of 19th
Rajput where beheaded by terrorists in Kupwara while on duty.
The incident was kept under wraps and came
to light through local media only on July 30. The bodies were handed over
to their families in Uttarakhand without heads, which some say were carried
away by the terrorists as a trophy.
Another incident occurred when one of the
Home Ministry interlocutors, Ms. Radha Kumar, visited a transition camp in
Kashmir where the Kashmiri Hindus employed, as per the Prime Minister's package
on return and rehabilitation, have been put up. This was during the last leg
of her interactions in the Kashmir Valley before the interlocutors submitted
their final report. She had a meeting with the Hindu ladies living in the
camp.
The Hindu ladies, as per eyewitnesses, told
Radha Kumar about the communal harassment and intimidation they had to face
daily while doing their jobs. Radha Kumar told them to learn to ignore unpleasant
things as she herself had learned to do while working in a Muslim institution.
The camp inmates later received telephone calls from the correspondent of
a local English daily, which were less of a normal journalist enquiry and
more of a warning to behave. Most of them later concluded that they should
not have revealed their experiences in front of the interlocutor.
The Malaise
Sitting over the beheading of two army men
just before the visit of the Pak Foreign Minister indicates a deeper malaise.
The Government of India has been flaunting incremental capitulations as strategic
necessities. The symptoms of this malaise have been there for quite some time.
When Vajpayee was sitting in the bus bound
for his infamous Lahore visit, he was informed about a gruesome massacre of
civilians by terrorists in Jammu. He was dismissive about any import of this
gruesome massacre on the ongoing Indo Pak peace process. The inherent message
was clear. The citizens of this country were expendable to some larger national
goal that the State was pursuing.
The fakeness of this approach was exposed
when Vajpayee chose to send his Foreign Minister to Kandahar to get the hostages
of the hijacked plane released after striking a deal with the terrorist regimes
operating there. The Vajpayee government cited public pressure as a reason
for the tame surrender. Here public indispensability became the core rationale
for overriding strategic security imperatives.
Faced with a mortal combat situation, a large
section of the Indian leadership is cultivating wishes which are more fatal
than the problem. Dr Manmohan Singh has also chosen to mount the same wish
horse. While Vajpayee and his think tank led by Brijesh Mishra chose to flaunt
their wishes as a new strategic vision, Singh seems to believe his wishes
to be ideological imperatives. This perhaps explains why he chose to invite
the Pak Prime Minister recently, despite knowing that just days before his
intelligence agencies had discovered a Pak sponsored plot to attack the Indian
Embassy in Afghanistan. He invited him perhaps against institutional strategic
advice. There are doubts whether what the Prime Minister of India is pursuing
with Pakistan has the acceptance of the national institutions handling matters
of national security.
Recent articulations of the National Security
Advisor were veiled expressions of his differences with the Pak doctrine which
Manmohan Singh has been pursuing. Pakistan's brazen affronts to India while
the latter is bending over backwards to accommodate Islamabad reflect elemental
contradictions in the so-called peace process which the Indian Prime Minister
is pursuing.
Feigning return of normalcy in Jammu &
Kashmir, and belittling the import of what is happening in Pakistan and Afghanistan,
is perhaps linked to this bizarre mindset which has taken control of those
in the political class who are overruling the strategic and tactical needs
of the nation at this juncture. Instead of analyzing the ground situation
to determine responses, the government approach suffers a unique perversion.
It blacks out happenings on the ground and selectively marshals empirical
data about the situation to sustain its policy or rather its wishes. The inertia
to understand what is happening is self-created.
The Inertia
The National Security Advisor recently made
two very pertinent interventions. In a letter to the Prime Minister, he clearly
stated that the Pakistani State was losing control over the extremists who
would come power sooner rather than later in Pakistan. He urged the Prime
Minister to take measures to respond to the situation. He observed that the
dividing line between State actors and non-State actors in Pakistan is fading
out. The recent happenings have clearly shown that the Pakistani Government
has shunned its approach of deniability and clearly started owning terrorist
regimes operating there as its strategic assets. On the Indian side, correlating
these developments to the emerging situation in Jammu and Kashmir and the
rest of the country is at best in the academic realm.
Even at the academic level there is reluctance
to understand what is happening. Else there would have been recognition of
the fact that the fading of the line between non-State actors and State actors
has been manifest on the Indian side in Jammu and Kashmir for a long time.
Allowing this has been part and parcel of the Indian response in Jammu and
Kashmir. Using the platform of the Legislative Assembly or any other credible
forum for promoting the secessionist agenda got encouragement from the Government
of India at the highest level.
Both the Union Home Minister and Foreign Minister
publicly sided with Omar Abdullah when he claimed that Jammu & Kashmir
had signed only the Instrument of Accession and not the Instrument of Merger,
particularly when the veracity and import of his claim was debated on the
basis of facts in Jammu. The stone-pelting campaign in Kashmir Valley last
year demonstrated the fading away of the distinction between State actors
and non-State actors in ample measure. The recent grenade attacks in Kashmir
Valley and allegations by a top NC leader that it was the Army's handiwork
reflects how terrorist regimes and their supporters in government are working
in tandem.
There is no attempt to recognize the temporary
shift of the focus of Jihad to the heart of Pakistan, and to analyze the fall
in violence in Jammu & Kashmir in this context. Crucial ideological and
strategic issues of the Jihadi war in the region are getting settled in Pakistan
at his juncture. How long will the State of Pakistan pretend its distance
from the Islamic Jihad for which it has been the primary motor? How much value
does the State of Pakistan attach to sustain its deniability vis-à-vis
the non-State assets it has created and perpetuated in this region?
Much public evidence is now available that
the State of Pakistan no longer thinks it feasible to deny closeness to terrorist
regimes operating in the region. It may soon become brazen enough to openly
declare its closeness to the international Jihad, as also its mentorship.
After the killing of Osama bin Laden many of Pakistan's top strategic thinkers
openly acknowledged that it had been in Pakistan's national interests to protect
and shield Osama. They are now openly acknowledging closeness to the Haqqani
group.
The non-State actors Pakistan created in the
region had a conflict situation with the Pakistani State primarily because
they wanted it to proclaim and declare its Islamic role unashamedly. This
so called rift between non-State actors it created and the State of Pakistan
is fast evaporating and will have a dramatic impact in Jammu and Kashmir.
The situation on this side may suddenly look grimmer.
The recent five-day gun battle in Kupwara,
wherein the army suffered heavy causalities, is only a reminder that the Jihad
machinery in Kashmir is well oiled. The terrorist regimes on this side of
the border have merged deftly with the State apparatus to meet the contingencies
of the times. An analysis of the situation in the state is not a uni-factor
affair. Churning out retrospective violence statistics or number of tourists
visiting the State and making assessments on the same is only an exercise
of self-delusion.
Increasing radicalization of the social milieu
in Kashmir, increased reach and influence of terrorist regimes to influence
mainstream politics, and fading away of the dividing line between separatist
infrastructure and government apparatus, widening of the network of illegal
economy in the State, multiplication of sleeper cells on the ground, deepening
nexus between separatists in the State and separatist organisations in the
rest of India, particularly the Maoists, increased propaganda against the
Army in the name of human rights, and the widening capabilities of terrorist
regimes are factors which should be factored in while making a judgment about
the ground situation in the State.
Last but not the least, the increased influence
of China as well as the Pakistani Army over the public mind, especially the
intellectual elite in Kashmir, cannot be overlooked. Unfortunately those at
the helm in India are ruthlessly following a course of blacking out all information
and realities on the ground which can exert pressures on the existing policy
direction. A situation has emerged where all national leverages and supports
in the State are getting treated as problem areas and impediments to national
endeavours in the State.
Caught in the Trap
In such a scenario, the depth of viciousness
of the situation for internally displaced Kashmiri Hindus needs to be understood
and felt. There is an increase in government attempts to delegitimize internal
displacement. Enforced power cuts and scanty water supply in the camps, because
the State Government is fast losing sensitivity to the internal displacement,
made summer hell for dwellers in the Jagati camp. On one side government tom-tommed
the upgraded facility in Jagati; at the same time the inmates are being communicated
one way or other that government will soon close down the camp facilities
and force them to return to the valley.
The newspapers and the community leadership
have brought to public view the corruption and bungling in the construction
of Jagati Camp as well as the entire relief organization. From the use of
steel in the construction work to the wood used in windows and doors, sanitary
and electric fittings, steel almirahs, as also the entire range of construction
material used for Jagati camp, the lack of proper quality is manifest to the
naked eye. After repeated demands from the public for government assurances
for the safety of the structures in Jagati, the government has chosen to remain
silent. If the allegations about the bungling in construction work at Jagati,
as appeared in local newspapers, turn out to be even partially true, we have
a scam worth more than a few hundred crores at hand.
But more important than this is the very safety
of camp dwellers living at Jagati. The entire encampment of more than 4000
quarters does not have sewerage disposal. The soakage pits and septic tanks
dug for sanitation are shallow and substandard. Anybody who visits the camp
even now when the weather is turning cooler will inhale the foul smell all
around.
Most appalling and pathetic is the atmosphere
of intimidation and fear that exists in the camp. The inmates are frightened
to speak against the government and the relief organization. The technique
of intimidation is usually to issue a re-verification threat or order to the
family living in the camp, which means stoppage of relief cash as well as
rations. The Apex Committee in the camps acts primarily as an instrument of
corruption and coercion on behalf of the government.
Out of the frying pan into the fire
If the fear to speak is perceptible in the
camps in Jammu, what must be the state of affairs in the transition camps
made in Kashmir Valley to provide lodging to returnee Hindu employees? When
Radha Kumar advised these Kashmiri Hindu employees to ignore unpleasant happenings
with them in Kashmir, she was not suggesting some sort of pragmatism. She
was advising them to accept devaluation as a fiat accompli. She was advising
acceptance of permanent inferior-isation.
To understand the nature of the unpleasantness
which returnee Kashmiri Hindus have to persevere with, a few real life anecdotes
will suffice. A Kashmiri Hindu young man, who recently arrived in Kashmir
valley through the PM's package, told this author that social realities in
Kashmir have changed unimaginably. He revealed his personal experience while
travelling in a local bus to his work place. Two Kashmiri Hindu ladies, who
had also joined recently, were travelling in the same bus to their work place.
Two local young men in the same bus suddenly got up mid-way and forcibly tried
to embrace the two Hindu ladies while the bus was moving. As this act of molestation
was on, all other passengers chose to ignore it and look the other way. Most
other passengers couldn't muster courage to object because they were not sure
of the antecedents of the two young Muslim enacting the ordeal. They could
be terrorists or over-ground workers of some terrorist outfits.
Another real life experience is more revealing
and elucidates the character of 'unpleasantnesses' which Radha Kumar advised
the Hindu lady employees living in the transition camp to ignore. A Hindu
girl who had recently come to the valley was experiencing harassment almost
daily at her work place. She would try to share it with her father in words
and references which her shyness and sense of shame would permit. His father,
in his naivety or selfishness, would take these complaints lightly and advise
her to ignore them. One day, while the young lady was returning to her rented
accommodation from her work place, a senior employee with a flowing beard
pursued her in his car and offered her a lift. The lady somehow managed to
refuse the lift, despite the patronizing insistence of the person. The elderly
zealot with a flirting expression told her he had been having sleepless nights
since he had seen her.
Devastated with the daily harassment, she
told her father to marry her to a local Muslim boy in case he was so needy
of her income. Her father, taken aback, asked the reason for such an extreme
suggestion. Angry and exasperated, she minced no words and told her father
that marrying her just once to a Muslim may save her from marrying several
times daily. The father and girl have since returned to Jammu, forsaking the
new job.
Social disorganization and debasement is an
expression of tearing apart of the fabric of mores and values of a society.
It is not per se a communal phenomenon. This tearing apart has happened because
of the militarization of the social milieu. Sometime back, when a retired
justice in Kashmir valley claimed there were more than 25,000 prostitutes
operating only in Srinagar city, he was talking about a wider social disorganization.
Displaced Kashmiri Hindus, despite their exiled
condition, had not allowed social disorganization to penetrate their social
milieu. The Prime Minister's return plan has pushed them into an environment
of vicious social disorganization. And this phenomenon of social disorganization
in the Kashmir Valley is now on the brink of turning the bend towards a vicious
communal process of "Love Jihad".
The recruitment process employed by the state
government to implement the Prime Minister's package on return and rehabilitation
of internally displaced Kashmiri Hindus has some bizarre features. The selected
candidate has to give a written undertaking to stay put at the place of his/her
employment, come what may, under all circumstances; majority of the selected
employees are females; most of these females are graduates or post graduates;
the majority of male candidates are lesser qualified than the selected female
candidates and most of the postings are district-wise postings, where the
employees cannot seek transfer beyond the district.
If the beheading of army personnel can be
hidden from public view for almost a month, incidents of harassment, assault,
intimidation, victimization of a small forsaken population of Kashmiri Hindus
living in the valley can be easily suppressed. Any politically uncomfortable
incident which comes to light occasionally is brushed aside by making Kashmiri
Hindus living there deny them. They are not in any position to say no to any
prodding from the government or the separatist establishment.
When a 'yagya', performed in a temple in Srinagar,
was desecrated by communal zealots in the dead of the night, a known Kashmiri
Hindu member of the Apex Committee was made to deny it publicly. Local newspapers
in Jammu mistakenly reported a case of attempted vandalism of a Hindu religious
place in Kashmir valley as an incident of fire. The newspapers were immediately
banned. The act of vandalism was lost in the controversy.
Mysterious disappearances of Kashmiri Hindu
youth in the valley some time back, a mysterious fire which partially burnt
the most sacred Hindu shrine in Srinagar very recently, and many incidents
of harassment and intimidation are either hushed up or never allowed to be
spoken about publicly. Separatist leaders in the valley, who visit the transition
camps apparently to show off their welcome for the returnees, invariably leave
while suggesting to them directly or indirectly that their safety would be
more assured if they criticize India and Panun Kashmir at regular intervals.
Soul Murder
For the present, there is one glaring convergence
between the policies pursued by the Jihadi establishment in Jammu and Kashmir
and the Government of India. And that is to seek to use the symbolic presence
of Kashmiri Hindus in the Valley and the trickle of their return from Jammu
for politics.
For the Government of India, its incremental
compromises with the separatists might get a secular legitimacy. For Jihad,
it will act as a game changer because of its potential to create a political
space for the retreat of the Government of India from the present status quo.
For Kashmiri Hindus the attrition will only increase. They will be forced
to persevere with the unpleasantness of the situation and hope that a new
massacre may not happen.
Those amongst them who are living in valley
have an existential compulsion to stay attached to their tormentors and increase
their psychological capabilities to deny or dissociate from their traumatic
experiences. In order to preserve their image of safety, they will have to
conform to the extent possible and keep silent about the unpleasantness. As
a character in George Orwell's 1984 says to another, "You will be hollow.
We will squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves".
The message from both the Government of India as well as the Jihadi establishment
to Kashmiri Hindus is no less vicious. We are witnessing the "soul murder"
of a community as also the nation to which it thinks it belongs.