Burhan Wani’s elimination is of a piece; to be juxtaposed with that of 45 other terrorists recently. These are mostly Pakistani in origin, making for a very high head count. This media noise now therefore, is indicative of a different type of panic. As is the stone-pelting, the grenade throwing, the snatching of rifles and ammunition from police stations and attacks on CRPF personnel. There is massive funding of all this, from Pakistan, some put it at over Rs. 100 crores, Hopefully, for those who took it, the money is genuine and not counterfeit Indian currency. The extra special hubbub from across the border, that has got the prime minister of Pakistan, LeT head Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, and Pakistani parliament babbling about it, is because there is concern as their plans for the destruction of the Valley come unstuck.
The Indian government is no longer saving up known killers in order to talk to them. It is instead eliminating them where they stand. This is disrupting and degenerating their plans, and giving them nowhere to run or hide. This strategy, this thin edge of the wedge, is designed to separate the terrorists from the majority of peaceful citizens living in the Valley. Combined with much greater success with arresting border infiltrators this summer, it is driving the Pakistani agents and their sympathisers into a state of despair.
But, in fact, the Late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed got on fine with Ram Madhav, General Secretary BJP, and the chief interlocutor; Amit Shah, BJP Party President, and with Narendra Modi himself. And now, his daughter, Mehbooba Sayeed, is going out of her way to support the action, in difficult circumstances, ever since the government has sharpened its attack on terrorists.
Perhaps the next stage should literally be to push the terrorists and separatists clear out, to POK. But, even if this were attempted, it would expose the fact that they would not be accepted to a man. Such anti-nationals are a nuisance to our peace and tranquillity, but are of little use to the Pakistani design, in Pakistan! And so, it is, that they must come to terms with the grim reality that their jihad is not working. There is less and less room to manoeuvre, and the attrition rate is rising to unacceptable levels. The media propaganda that suggests that this government is alienating the Valley, must understand this end game first. And it is not the peaceful silent majority that is unhappy with this new resolve, but only those who have made a profession out of living off the blood and suffering of innocents for decades. Their bluff has been called. Their days too are numbered.
The Kashmir debate has been surging and eddying ever since the BJP almost won the maximum number of seats in the five-stage J&K state assembly elections in December 2014. With 25 seats, it fell short of 19, for a majority, at 44. These could have been supplied by an alliance; with either the People’s Democratic Party, (PDP), which had 28; or the out-going National Conference (NC), with 15, plus 4 ‘lone rangers’, from the 7 who also won. For a moment, there was even talk of the arch-rivals, in the PDP and the NC, joining together to bid for power, instead of combining with the BJP, one, or the other. Omar Abdullah playfully reminded Mufti Mohamed Sayeed that the latter knew where he lived. But the earlier rhetoric of the BJP being anathema, was all but gone, after the massive general election win of May 2014. Instead, all options, permutations and combinations were being tried in the corridors and rooms where politics was the jockey. Congress, the NC’s all-weather partner, was not sufficiently endowed this time, with just 12 seats, to make up the numbers. But it too, in a manner typical of the intrigue-filled Valley, hinted that Congress, like Barkis, was willing if PDP so desired, since it needed just 16. The atmosphere was captured quite well in Shahid Kapoor’s depiction of Haidar, a version of Hamlet in the snow.
Congress, reduced to a cipher nationally, with nothing more to lose, did say, it was necessary to keep the ‘communal’ BJP out of power, at all costs. All this, from just 18 months ago. Initially also, there was also a certain panic on the part of those ensconced in the Valley, and those who stir the pot of valley politics in New Delhi. The Lotus Party might set about the blatant saffronisation of Kashmir, some thought, and follow an aggressive Hindutva agenda, with an immediate and strong push for the abolition of Article 370, long stated in their manifesto. Pre-emptive editorial strikes were executed, particularly in the English media, till the paranoid realised that they might well be shadow-boxing without an opponent. Prime Minister Modi, who repeatedly visited J&K during the election campaigning, and thereafter, made more of the train-line inauguration to Katra – something of an engineering marvel, and electricity generation in the state, rather than what the opposition was fearfully anticipating.
Article 370, everyone knows, is no more than a shingle in many ways. It can stay for all the good it does, because it doesn’t get in the way of assimilation in J&K. If there aren’t enough Pandits living in the Valley today, and the property rights need amending, it can be done, without mucking around with a dead-letter statute, that may be a Rorschach Test of history. And so, since Modi wasn’t attacking, the belligerence against him and his government, against the Army, the CRPF, the AFSPA, rose up. This, to fill the difference between thought and action. The relationship with coalition partner PDP, was slow to form at first, but there was the fact to remember that Mufti Mohammad Sayeed had been Vajpayee’s Home Minister. And once committed to, it has been good for both sides, certainly better than might have been expected, if one is to give credence to PDP being called a ‘soft separatist’ party. This more so because it tied up with a so-called ‘arch-nationalist’ one!
But, in fact, the Late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed got on fine with Ram Madhav, General Secretary BJP, and the chief interlocutor; Amit Shah, BJP Party President, and with Narendra Modi himself. And now, his daughter, Mehbooba Sayeed, is going out of her way to support the action, in difficult circumstances, ever since the government has sharpened its attack on terrorists. Oddly, to some shallow observers, but not the astute, who understand which way the wind is blowing, the PDP has turned substantially nationalist. It is a little different for the erstwhile quasi-nationalist party, with blow-hot blow-cold antecedents, Omar Abdullah’s NC. It too, was once part of the Vajpayee government. Long accustomed to the loaves and fishes of office, it is very uncomfortable out in the cold. It was, after all, almost the inheritor of the land, once Maharaja Hari Singh signed on with India. But now, desperate to survive politically, it is found, for cynical leverage, to be flirting openly with separatist elements.
Gautam Mukherjee is a columnist who writes on politics, economics, foreign affairs and trends. This is personal opinion of writer.