Observers and analysts in Kashmir desiring a speedy return to normality worry that an absence of “political imagination” on the government’s part is encouraging the project of rapid religious mobilisation in the Valley, not unlike the processes that produced Bhindrawale in Punjab three decades ago.
It is the religious far right that has been in the lead in the violence-strewn passage since June. Yet, high-level deliberations in Srinagar and in the nation’s capital have given little evidence of a strategy to checkmate the trend, choosing to dwell instead on convenient but empty expressions such as “trust deficit” and “governance deficit”.
Sources suggest that in a short-sighted bid to curtail the political effectiveness and longevity of the ageing Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the charismatic pro-Pakistan and anti-India mobiliser, the authorities in Kashmir have allowed the new crop of leaders of the violent protests, notably Masrat Alam Bhat, a free run.
Mr Geelani is seen as a “moderate” far right ideologue, but effective, obdurate and consistent. The ambitious Mr Bhat, a former militant commander who is seeking to replace Mr Geelani as the new face of the Kashmiri jehad, is of course, “extreme” but doesn’t carry the authority and weight of Mr Geelani. According to a prominent Srinagar figure, the government’s objective appears to be to “outflank” Mr Geelani, rather than check the rapid spread of right-wing Islam through the vehicle of violent protests, in the expectation that this will cause a setback to the pro-Pakistan constituency. Secular and moderate people in the Valley see such an approach as “outrageously naïve”.
Bashir Manzar, the founder-editor of the Kashmir Images, a Srinagar English daily, believes that the government, as well as the national and the state parties, singularly failed between 2002 and 2005 (after the first post-militancy election) to take advantage of Mr Geelani’s disregard by Pakistan — and consequent downscaling in the valley — to boost secular and democratic politics. Thus, Sajjad Lone, who has moderate separatist lineage on account of his famous father Abdul Ghani Lone, took courage and contested the Kupwara Parliament seat in 2009, but was subsequently ignored by New Delhi politically, although he had polled nearly 70,000 votes. Seeing the ignominious end of this pioneering effort by a separatist, many politicians and social leaders simply went into hibernation.
Given Kashmir’s ethos, the situation is hardly beyond retrieval, observers say. For instance, when thousands of violent outsiders, mobilised from the Pattan area, descended on Tangmarg and burned an old Christian missionary school in the wake of rumours of the desecration of the Quran in the US last Monday, large numbers turned up from the neighbouring village of Kazipora to stop the arsonists, but were outnumbered.
Many in Kashmir believe that rather than focus on the AFSPA or the question of autonomy, the government should set free hundreds of teenagers lately picked up under the harsh Public Safety Act. Emotionally surcharged, some may have been involved in protests but are fundamentally in the clear. This could be the “elusive starting point” Union home minister P. Chidambaram is looking for.