India has so far failed to make any headway in the Kashmir situation, which continues to boil over in spite of the curfew, aimed at breaking the back of a retriggered azadi (freedom) movement or at least crippling it, now nearing its 50th day!

With the flashpoint being the killing of a Hizbul commander Burhan Wani by Indian security forces on July 8, 2016, the ‘misguided’ agitation (as most of us prefer to perceive it) has spun out of control of even those who had initially engineered it.

The 22-year-old Wani, who embraced militancy at the impressionable age of 15 in 2010, had assumed the status of a poster boy for the jihadis, thanks to his efficient use of social media platforms and the uploading of several videos to reach out to and influence potential recruits.

In a state where even the innocent can get shot, posing in a bullet proof jacket with an AK-47 in hand, flanked by heavily armed militants holding assault rifles, one is literally begging to be bumped off, and a bounty of Rs.10 lakh was announced for Wani’s head. The chance came when he arrived for Eid in the Kokernag area of Anantnag district, accompanied by two other militants, and was cornered by a joint force of the police and the Army. The house they took refuge in was blown up, setting the stage for more trouble to follow, given his massive fan following.

Leaders wanting to ride piggyback on this unexpected situation immediately gave their own calls for a shutdown in the state. Violence erupted soon after his funeral which was attended by lakhs of people, including many notables of the separatist movement. Pakistani flags were waved and pro-azadi slogans were shouted but that should not have alarmed the administration, given the frequency of such offences being committed at the slightest provocation in the past.

On the days following his funeral, thousands marched in processions in various towns and villages across Kashmir, with the numbers soon swelling, causing the authorities to initiate a clampdown. But the agitation only grew, as did the instances of violence against security men. This triggered a nastier backlash that saw many civilians, including little children getting shot at and killed by the forces. Somewhere, the difference between agitator and terrorist got blurred in the minds and therefore gun-sights of the shooters!

The suspending of Internet and WiFi services and the blocking of cable and TV transmission failed to stop people from coming on to the streets in almost all parts of the valley, clearly underscoring the fact that it is was growing anger which was spurring the protests, and that the so-called separatists no longer held sway and so could not be counted on to stop what is now turning out to be India’s biggest tragedy since Independence.

Thanks to the harshly imposed curfew, all shops and commercial establishments, schools, colleges and other educational institutions remain closed and all transport facilities have remained off the roads, causing untold hardships to the people of Kashmir.

Unlike in other areas of the country that have faced unrest in the past, there has been no relaxation of curfew in Kashmir and no attempt made to supply essentials to a population that is probably starving by now in most places. Token efforts by activists from across the border to hand over food and medicines to the besieged people of Kashmir have been rejected by Indian authorities with predictably snappy retorts.

Is India with its mighty Army intending to subjugate the Kashmiris and starve them into submission? As of now, this strategy does not seem to be working. Under cover of darkness, many manage to move about, dodging past the razor wires, barricades and mobile bunkers of heavily armed soldiers, to share or borrow provisions even as they see no hope of peace in the immediate future.

In the meanwhile, more troops are moving in, and even the Border Security Force has been brought back, 12 years after it was moved out in 2004. Will palpable peace be ensured only at the point of a gun? There have been some terribly painful situations due to excessive force. More than 70 people have died, and more than 10,000 injured in police beatings and firing, while many have been crippled and maimed and blinded for life thanks to the now infamous pellet gun. The latest is the case of an 8-year-old boy suffering punctured lungs, revealing that despite reservations expressed by civil society and the courts, the use of this crippling weapon is wanton and widespread.

Concerns are being raised in the international community over the way India is tackling the situation and it is imperative that the forces are made to see the difference between stone pelting protesters and heavily armed militants. The rules of engagement when dealing with violent civilians presuppose that they will be shot in the legs. Even then there could be fatalities as people die of leg wounds too, but it will at least not allow the forces to get away with murder.

It must also be understood that shooting in the legs would eventually and inevitably cripple the azadi movement.

Right now, the horrors being perpetrated by angry security forces are being splashed on news channels all across the world. Nothing can justify an Army breaking into and entering homes, pulling out the boys and men and taking them into custody where they are brutalized because of impotent rage.

Nothing can justify the beating to death in custody of a 32-year-old college teacher, Shabir Ahmed, just as the sheepish apology from the Army and the Centre for his brutal and cold-blooded murder, can never remove the pain from the hearts of his relatives and definitely not their growing disillusionment and hatred.

Nothing can justify the shooting of an elderly couple, Abdul Qayoom (80) and his wife, Nazeera (75) on Saturday, August 20, who like any other parents, made a bid to save their son from violently abusive soldiers who had broken into their home and were dragging him out by his hair. That fact that custodial deaths are common in the Valley will have spurred them to try and prevent their son’s abduction by the soldiers despite the mercilessness and savagery they were being subjected to. The eerily disgusting fact is that the son they attacked was not the one they wanted and they were actually after his younger brother. On learning he was not at home they angrily pounced on the elder sibling! The old man was shot in the stomach and is in a critical condition with pellets having ruptured his intestines and getting lodged close to his heart, while the old woman was shot in the shoulder. Both of them were shot at very close range. Their sense of anguish can be felt by all of us if we ever envisage such a dreadful tragedy occurring inside the sanctity of our own homes.

The BJP-partnered administration in Jammu & Kashmir remains largely ineffective everywhere in the valley and the Centre too remains ham-handed in spite of the Supreme Court repeatedly cautioning against the unbridled violence and brutality by security forces and advising the initiating of dialogue.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi did make some statements and also chanted the Vajpayee mantra of Insaniyat, Jamhooriyat and Kashmiriyat, but citizens in the Valley say that these words are as hollow as all of his pre-election and post-election pronouncements. They deplore his reluctance to intervene personally stating that his only achievements are his whirlwind overseas trips to fix trade deals for a coterie of businessmen and traders who offer him rides in their private planes and helicopters.

In the meanwhile, Modi’s ministers mouth statements, passing them off as possible solutions to the Valley’s problems. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s submission, that there was no need for talks and development was the antidote to turbulence in the Valley, exposes a blind spot where baniagiri is seen as the magic pill.

Sitting at an all-party conference in Delhi and announcing that we need development and dialogue to resolve the situation is fine, but only when the real stake-holders and players from the Valley are included in the deliberations. The sense of alienation is almost total.

India fails to understand that, thanks to the draconian AFSPA, most Army excesses including rape and molestation go largely unmonitored. With many instances of cold-blooded murder even being justified by right wingers, the people of Kashmir have gone past caring about the sops being offered by what they now feel is an occupying power.

Pakistan’s successive governments have always been instigators in this troubled region and have continuously played the communal card, since the population in Kashmir is largely Muslim. Thanks to the various instances of bloodletting by Indian security forces, they have successfully managed to deflect attention from Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK) and maintain the world’s focus only on the Indian state of J & K. The rise of rightwing fanaticism after the BJP’s coming to power, the murders and lynching of Muslims under the pretext of beef consumption or trade, and the defending of these atrocities by BJP ministers and party workers and by their violent affiliates (Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal) have only served to give Pakistani authorities further opportunities to polarize the situation in Kashmir and elsewhere in India.

Add to that our own MPs (some donning religious garbs) making unpleasant references to communities that are largely non-vegetarian, abusing those who protest against lynching and murder, threatening those who express concern over the gunning down of award-wining thinkers and activists, branding dissenters as anti-nationals and asking them to go to Pakistan, deeming every Kashmiri male to be a terrorist, and the mess-up is complete.

The emergence of controversial Muslim preachers with access to unlimited funds from Arab countries, using their TV channels and jamborees to fulfill their own agendas further queers the pitch.

The Pakistan Army has never got over its country’s dismemberment when Indian forces liberated East Pakistan and midwifed the birth of a free Bangladesh in 1971. That war saw more than 90,000 Pakistani soldiers eagerly surrendering to the Indian Armed Forces in a desperate bid to escape the wrath of the victorious Mukti Bahini forces of Bangladesh. One such frightened soldier was Pervez Musharraf, who later ruled Pakistan and again screwed up militarily in Kargil in 1999.

Taking Kashmir away therefore would be tantamount to settling scores with India and overcoming the repeated humiliations in the battlefields of 1965 and 1971, and during the Kargil misadventure of 1999, when its troops slunk away holding aloft white flags of surrender. Sending trained terrorists routinely into Kashmir and Punjab, and to Mumbai in November 2008, are some of their desperate moves. In addition, the wily intelligence service, ISI, has often lured India’s disillusioned Muslims into starting their own outfits and has provided them with free training, unlimited supply of funds and arms, ammunition and explosives. It had helped the angry Memon brothers from Mumbai’s Mahim area to wreak havoc through a series of bomb blasts, set off as payback for the massive losses to their own businesses during the post-Babri Masjid demolition riots of 1992 and 1993. India’s own nefarious record of communal strife, including the 2002 post-Godhra riots in Gujarat when current Prime Minister Narendra Modi was Chief Minister of that state, hardly helps when attempts are made to counter Pak propaganda on the international stage.

In a recent development, Modi riled Pakistan by talking about its province of Balochistan, where people see themselves as different in culture from the rest of Pakistan and therefore resent being under ‘occupation.’ Balochi activists who welcomed his comments about their right to freedom and self-determination are now facing sedition charges. The Indian press is currently being fed with releases (from God knows where) pertaining to some other provinces (Gilgit-Baltistan) of Pakistan which are reportedly also wanting to break away.

But this has only served to unite the fractious country, with Pakistanis of opposing political and religious ideologies putting aside their differences to identify India as the real enemy in the region. It has sought intervention of the UN and the international community to look into the atrocities in Kashmir even as India has repeatedly failed to get the same world body to declare Mumbai terror attack mastermind Hafeez Sayed as a terrorist.

Ties between the two countries reached a new low when India’s Home Minister Rajnath Singh recently visited Pakistan for the SAARC conference, only to be cold shouldered by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and other senior members of his government during the meetings and later at state dinners. Subsequent interactions between the two nations have therefore been toned down and are now limited to token exchanges between lesser officials.

The Pakistani government has also taken up the issue of a UN monitored referendum in Kashmir as per the UN Security Council Resolution 47 of April 21, 1948. What it fails to understand is that the resolution was passed under Chapter VI of the UN Charter and therefore is only an advisory and not mandatory, as for East Timor, under Chapter VII. The resolution also recommends that ‘in order to ensure the impartiality of the plebiscite Pakistan withdraw all tribesmen and nationals who entered the region for the purpose of fighting and that India leave only the minimum number of troops needed to keep civil order.’ The Commission was also to send as many observers into the region as it deemed necessary to ensure the provisions of the resolution were enacted. Understandably, both sides find this untenable!

In the meanwhile, various social network groups with pretensions to patriotism have mushroomed in both countries, spending quality time taking potshots at each other with Islam and Hinduism getting parodied to hilarious levels. The animosity of saffron fringe lunatics is evenly matched in lunacy by their counterparts across the border. The unseemly competition has also spurred a whole lot of distortions, exaggerations and fabrications of achievements and failures of the two nations. Both factions however have even nastier contempt for the peacemakers within their own nations and vitriol is directed at writers, actors, activists, liberals and opposition candidates. Crackpot soldiers spewing venom and threatening violence against those who do not toe the fanatical line are a rage and abound in both camps.

Ultimately, for the general public that cannot or will not see the difference between a rioter and a terrorist , Kashmir gets reduced to little more than a fight for real estate, little more than the kerchief thrown in that small ring on the ground in the game of ‘dog-and-the-bone.’

Wary of tarnishing his carefully crafted international reputation and knowing questions will otherwise be asked when gallivanting abroad, PM Narendra Modi has been making conciliatory noises. These however do not sit well with fanatics in his own government and those like-minded citizens who believe the only solution is to trample the population under military boots and repopulate the Valley with families of Kashmiri Pandits and soldiers inside specially designated colonies (read fortified enclaves). Outraged locals have likewise promised Armageddon and bloodshed in retaliation.

There are many devious and concerted attempts at keeping Kashmir on the boil and the following excerpt from an English daily, Kashmir Digest, of August 24, 2016 illustrates the point:

The head priest at Hindu Martand Temple in South Kashmir’s Mattan area of Anantnag district Wednesday refuted the news reports that the temple has been attacked by stone-pelters saying “some hate-mongers especially from Kashmir Pandit community are hell-bent to add fuel to the fire.” Pertinently, a video has gone viral on social media showing some youth pelting stones towards Martand Temple.

“It is a doctored video. I must tell you Muslims in the area themselves protect this temple. Without verifying the authenticity of the video some Hindi newspapers from outside State published this ‘fake’ news while some Pandits who claim to be the messiah of the community misinformed the country through social media,” the head priest Ashok Sodhi told Kashmir based news agency CNS.

He added that on July 9, a day after the death of Hizb Commander Burhan Wani, clashes erupted outside the temple between protesters and CRPF while temple was never attacked. “This was the sole incident that occurred outside the temple and that day protesters attacked CRPF and not the temple. The irony is that some Kashmiri Pandits took to social media and spread the wrong information about the attack on the temple that never happened. The video that has gone viral is a doctored one and the government should initiate inquiry about it and nab the culprits who are hell-bent to defame the Muslim population of Kashmir,” Ashok Sodhi said.

Unable to cope with mixed signals, CRPF jawans and their officers were seen roaming about drunk in Srinagar on the night of Friday, August 19, 2016, attacking just about anybody and everybody they came across. This shameful situation would have never come to light had it not been for media persons who were at the receiving end of this disgusting wretchedness, one of them from the Bangalore-based Deccan Herald. Only a day earlier, CRPF sub-inspector P.S. Yadav fired his pellet gun at an ambulance, critically injuring its driver who managed to drive the vehicle, with its patients, right up to the hospital before passing out. In both the above instances, the authorities have ‘instituted an enquiry.’

There are many on the subcontinent who believe that the pampered Kashmiris have had it coming to them and are constantly condoning excesses by the security forces, citing mitigating circumstances or by romanticizing the sacrifice that the uniformed men make, supposedly foregoing the luxuries of family life in a big city to eke out an existence inside a lonely bunker huddled against the enemy and the cold with only blankets and spare rations. Anybody who does not share this notion is, of course, an anti-national.

No amount of remonstrating will make the prejudiced minds see the difference between an agitating Kashmiri flinging a stone and a trained terrorist lobbing a grenade.

Would a glimpse of the truth make a difference anyway? The spin-doctors appointed by the ruling dispensation have glossed over the fact that a serving colonel was arrested for robbing gold on a highway, another was found with drugs worth Rs.15 crore, In 2015, West Bengal police arrested three army men for raping a minor girl in a moving train, while in the same year six army men were sentenced to life in jail for a fake encounter in the Valley. A news channel revealed that top officers and their men smeared tomato ketchup on their uniforms in order to fake wounds and win medals even as the bodies of murdered young Kashmiri boys lay stiffening at their feet.

For those who feel safe in the mistaken belief that these are mere aberrations and happen only in far off regions of Kashmir and the North East: On this Independence Day more than a hundred police and PAC personnel swooped down on Saharanpur’s Usand village, ransacked every Dalit home and beat up the people so badly that three persons, Sarita Devi, Rakesh Kumar and Chaman Singh died, while several others are still in hospital. Disgustingly, Saharanpur SSP Manoj Tiwari explained it all away, saying, ‘Some people attacked the police, so we had to resort to mild use of force.’

Home Minister Rajnath Singh is currently in Kashmir hoping to get a dialogue going, but leave alone a solution, even a start remains as elusive as ever. For once, all are being allowed to sit at the table and the invitation is open to all. This is a great opportunity to trounce Syed Ali Shah Geelani, leader and chairman of the Hurriyat Conference, who says talks within the framework of the Indian Constitution is out of the question? Defeat him by calling his bluff and exposing him and his accomplices as responsible for the unrest and therefore the lack of progress in the Valley for so many decades. This can be done, and fast, through BJP’s alliance partners, the PDP and through other pro-India bodies in the state. And no, not through the Army! Not when the guns are still smoking!

Time is running out. As I have often said before, ‘there are sinister forces currently in the world, much crueler than any of the terrorists from Pakistan, and they are waiting to sneak in under cover of the darkness we are creating in other people’s hearts.’

This apprehension is also expressed by PDP MP and former Deputy CM of Jammu & Kashmir, Muzaffar Hussain Baig, who states in an article by Aarti Singh in the Times of India dated August 25, 2016, ‘this time the claim for Khilafat is made by an extremist religious organization, the Islamic State, which believes in the use of terror. With the emergence of this phenomenon, many countries in the world have been affected, and there is danger that it might penetrate into the minds and hearts in Kashmir unless we do something far-sighted and effective.’

Kashmir – Mastermind of Pakistan’s misadventure in Kargil, Pervez Musharraf