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Undoing the idea of India, and Kashmir

Kashmir will never be the same again.

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Arun Joshi in Jammu 

Kashmir will never be the same again. Nor will its relations with the rest of the country stay on the same scale as they have been for decades. Even during the last 30 years of heightened armed militancy and counter-terrorism operations, there was a class in the Valley that saw hope in India as a nation, a nation that could help them realise their dreams of making it big in the world. That relationship is not under strain, it is collapsing. The February 14 Pulwama terror attack left at least 40 CRPF jawans dead and a nation outraged. Slogans hailing terror group Jaish-e-Mohammad that claimed responsibility for the attack reverberated in the premises of the Jamia Mosque in the heart of Srinagar on Friday just before the chief cleric and chairman of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference was to deliver his weekly sermon. This is the new reality of Kashmir. Hum kya chahte azadi (We want freedom) of the 1990s has transformed into voices hailing globally known terrorist groups operating in Pakistan.

Kashmir was left in shock and awe when local militant Adil Ahmad Dar rammed an explosive-laden car into the CRPF convoy and caused the macabre act. Their first impression was that the images of the attack on social media were from Syria or Yemen where such incidents take place quite often. It took many hours for them to reconcile with the deadly fact that it was one among them who had done it.

Soon, India’s anger was bursting at the seams. The loss of CRPF jawans at the hands of the Pakistan-based terror group was too much to bear. The fact that a local Kashmiri had acted at the behest of Pakistan fuelled the anger. Some fringe elements took unto themselves to “teach the traitors a lesson”. They were blinded by their own narrative and could not gauge the end result of their acts of hooliganism against the Kashmiris — students, traders, vendors and employees.

Amid all this, India’s own narrative — that Kashmir is an integral part of the country — has been hit hard. This chasm is impossible to bridge and the Kashmiris who were wondering why someone among them had become a suicide bomber have started offering justification for his acts. Students have returned home with frightening stories of harassment. 

The initial shock has been overtaken by the feeling of humiliation heaped on them in their colleges, universities and workplaces outside Kashmir, simply because they came from the same place and shared the ethnicity and religion of the suicide bomber. Some of them say they have given up the idea of chasing dreams that they were pursuing in various parts of the country. Where will they head next is a question that has dreadful answers in store.

Kashmir is a small place geographically, but it always thinks big. Its capacity to absorb shocks is legendary. But when it is hurt, it ensures that the wounds continue to fester to ensure that the narrative of conflict expands. Violence has today become the only way to register the Kashmiri resistance — the massive funeral processions of the slain Jaish militants are a prologue without an epilogue.

What is more worrying in Kashmir is that the places and people they could access to explore new opportunities and new frontiers of success have shrunk because the suicide bomber was a Kashmiri youth. His identity has now become a bane for them, but they have now been pushed to such a situation where they cannot disown him. 

Ironically, they have been pushed to empathise with the suicide bomber because of the unfortunate incidents to which Kashmiris were subjected to at some of the places in the country. There is no return from that now. They are frightened, they are angry. The recent hostilities are pushing them towards self-radicalisation. This is a dreadful narrative. This is dangerous.

The silence of the so-called “responsible people” in the government has also hit them. This has made them deny emphatically that they ever did anything provocative — like raising pro-Pakistan slogans or posting any anti-India and offensive posts on social media.

Before Pulwama happened, the Indian narrative was that Kashmiri youth were being indoctrinated and radicalised by Pakistan via social media. It was blamed on the happenings in the Middle-East and Africa, all in the name of Islam. 

Post Pulwama, the nightmarish experiences that they have undergone in some places in the country where they were confronted by overzealous chest-thumping patriots would send them scurrying for destructive options. Kashmir is racing towards its centuries-old history. The fringe elements in the country and in the Valley have accomplished what Pakistan has not been able to in the past decades. India has lost the plot in the Valley. Kashmir will never be the same again.

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