Uneasy lies the vale

Where there’s smoke there’s fire. And the smoke in Kashmir is not coming from a Cuban peace pipe

David Devadas Srinagar

Political inaction exacts its own price. And the current perception in Kashmir is that the price may very well be a return to the early days of secessionist militancy when terror ripped through the valley following the abduction of Rubaiya Sayeed in December, 1989. “The situation is heading back to 1990,” says Kashmir Times publisher Ved Bhasin, dramatically. Even if one is tempted to treat Bhasin’s statement as journalistic hyperbole, it is impossible to overlook the echoes his observation finds in other independent quarters.

A shopkeeper in a sleepy village, not far off the Srinagar-Leh highway, compares what he now sees coming with the long past days of 1991. At the time, the situation in rural stretches had worsened further; state institutions existed only on paper. So uneasy is the shopkeeper that he does not want to be named. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Chairman of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, sounds gloomy: “If nothing happens (to rectify things), all — including the Hurriyat — will find it difficult to handle the situation a year from now.”

For the moment, many of these appear to be just ‘felt’ predictions because it is difficult to put a finger on hard evidence regarding the worsening political and social climate in the state. Some, like a Pandit from Jammu, who has visited Kashmir every summer for several years, speak like one who can sense the calm before a storm: “It’s in the air. I smell something very disturbing here this summer.” It is unlikely, however, that such an unspecific sense of unease will have registered in New Delhi for, as the Mirwaiz puts it, “Unless the people in Delhi hear a bang, they think (there is) normalcy.”

There are significant straws in the wind, however. Here’s one: police records show that requests by politicians for police escorts to public meetings and other rural tours have come down dramatically — to just eight per cent of the requests made last year (between January and July each year). These requests include those from secessionist politicians, the ‘moderate’ ones among whom often seek police escort. Obviously, relatively fewer politicians this year have dared to try and keep in touch with constituents, or address public meetings, or even simply venture forth to inaugurate projects and attend ceremonies in rural areas.

Another indicator of the change in the ground situation is the experience in August of a Kashmiri journalist who works for a major — and well-respected  — national news channel. He and his crew were almost lynched by villagers in the Bandipora area of north Kashmir. They were also at the receiving end of a verbal barrage regarding the bias of the ‘national media’, and were finally forced to leave the village.

Analysts in Kashmir are hard put to explain this worsening of mood. The majority blame it on the shift of power from Mufti Mohammed Sayeed to Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad in November last. Azad’s focus on a clean, efficient administration has not gone down well with the people. The perception is that Mufti was better able to contain human rights abuses and rein in the security forces which are now behaving repressively.

In particular, the murder of a college student by security men who were checking his identity on a bus in uptown Srinagar in mid-August, has shaken and deeply upset Kashmiris. Versions of what happened vary, but the pattern of such incidents leads many to believe that the boy was killed after he refused to be humiliated (by holding his ears, getting into a ‘murga’ (rooster) posture, etc.)