One step at a time

A considered and careful response is necessary after the Mumbai blasts or else it can endanger the peace process in Kashmir
Iftikhar Gilani Delhi

With a chorus urging India to go for Pakistan’s jugular in the wake of the Mumbai blasts, political parties in Jammu and Kashmir are worried about reprisals and an increase in violence. Mainstream Kashmiri nationalist parties like the National Conference (NC) and the People's Democratic Party (PDP) believe that the India-Pakistan standoff will shrink political and democratic space in the state, which had grown in the past three years. "All the gains scored after 2002 assembly elections will go down the drain as the situation has already taken a drift and the mindsets are once again returning to war rooms," a Kashmiri leader told HARDNEWS.

Soon after India declared that the bonhomie with Pakistan was over at least for the time being, Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, Omar Abdullah of the NC and president of the PDP Mehbooba Mufti flew to Delhi and tried to impress upon leaders that the consequences of blocking dialogue with Pakistan would be unbearable for Kashmir. "This surge of militancy is itself due to the slow pace of the peace process; if things slow down any further, there will be even greater violence," the Kashmiri leader said.

The alliance partner PDP president Mehbooba Mufti urged extreme caution before deviating from the peace process. While asking for the intervention of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Mrs Sonia Gandhi to salvage the peace process, she cautioned against the government playing in the hands of hardliners. "A knee-jerk reaction would only help the negative elements, whose vested interests remain under threat from the peace process," said her father and former chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. Though, publicly chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad has toed the line of the Congress Party, in private he has also expressed similar worries.

Moderate Hurriyat Conference chief, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, also said that it was time to foil designs of those who wanted to derail the peace process. "India's decision will provide an opportunity to those who want to derail it," he said, pointing towards hardliners, who have been now pressing him to form a joint front with the hardline faction of Syed Ali Geelani. He also demanded an impartial probe to unravel the "black faces" of those responsible for these heinous acts.

Mirwaiz claimed that Mohammad Afzal Rather and another boy overpowered by people while lobbing the grenade on tourists and handed over to police were affiliated with pro-government militant outfit Ikhwan. He said it was a serious matter that demands impartial enquiry.