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Jammu and Kashmir at crossroads

Billy I Ahmed
THE stunningly beautiful Kashmir Valley in August was echoing with the word "Azadi" - the word for "freedom". Hundreds of thousands of Kashmiris had been marching to demand freedom from India. Schools and businesses across the region had been closed as the central government in New Delhi mobilised thousands of troops into the area to assert its control.
There are many things that the separatist elements exaggerated and took extreme position on. Their march to Muzzafarabad, slogan of Azadi got response mainly due to two reasons.
The first and the main was the opinion in the valley that if already the 'Amamath yatra' is going so well what is the need to transfer the land to the shrine board? For the people of Kashmir 'Amamath yatra’ is one of the main sources of income and is part of the culture of Kashmir, and has so far never been seen in communal light.
The move of the Governor, Sinha, a covert BJP sympathizer, to Hinduise the yatra was a big blow to the traditions of the valley. Nowhere is the forest land transferred for any other purpose. In cases of fairs the land is temporarily used without being transferred.
Here the complicated story is the Governor and his Principal Secretary, who was CEO of the shrine, manoeuvred this illegal move with the help of the forest official in charge. The State Government's refusal to follow the illegal decision of the board and forest department was stalled by the courts and the seeds of dispute were sown.
Also the people in the valley have been suffering either the militancy or rights violation by the army. So their sentiments are on the burning point, needing one separatist group to ignite the issue. A sorry state of affairs! Nothing can match the suffering of the people of Kashmir, which had a potential for improvement but tilings are going haywire now.
Second was the distress in the valley because of the blockade by the protesters in the Jammu region. This is being denied fiercely by the BJP which was at the core of the Jammu agitation. The truth is that this agitation frightened the truck drivers.
This led to intense and immediate reaction in the valley. As this was the main artery connecting the valley with the country they were deprived of essentials, medicines, and routine supplies. The backbone of the economy, the export of fruits suffered leading to depression in the already emaciated economy.
Since June this year trouble has been brewing in the valley over the local government's move to "divert" 100 acres of land to a trust managing a Hindu pilgrimage. Muslim protests led the provincial government to revoke its order. '1 hat decision, however, enraged Hindus who blocked the highway to Srinagar, which, while less than successful as an economic weapon, led to the Muslims of the Kashmir Valley exploding in anti-India protest
Kashmiris saw the blockade as a symbol of Hindu India's ability’ to hold Muslim Kashmir in a vice. "The blockade was made out to be much worse than it probably was," says Navneeta Chadha Behera, author of Demystifying Kashmir. "In effect it was like a psychological war. A fear psychosis was created where people panicked about shortage of medicines and milk for children, about truckloads of apples rotting. How much was fact and how much rumour, no one knows. ”
The intensity’ of Kashmiri anger, however, runs deep. For two decades, Kashmiris have lived in one of the most militarised regions of the world, with 800,000 troops stationed in the 15,520 sq km (5,992 sq mile) Kashmir Valley and running under laws that give them impunity from prosecution.
Charges of extra-judicial killings, rapes, abductions and torture were levelled against them with chilling regularity during the 1990s. The Indian government has consistently denied Kashmiri calls to demilitarise, saying the terror infrastructure across the border in Pakistan has yet to be dismantled. Resentment continues to simmer over the disappearance" of more than 8,000 Kashmiris during the insurgency’.
Human rights organisations claim the missing were killed by security forces. Kashmiri demands for greater cross-border travel and trade relations with Pakistan have also seen slow progress because of continuing distrust between the two countries. Meanwhile, Kashmiri hopes for greater autonomy have also remained largely unrealised.
That has been pestering because Kashmir acceded to India in the 1947 partition of British India into Pakistan and India based on carefully negotiated terms giving the region the right to self-governance on all issues except foreign relations, communication and defense.
The tale of Jammu has the other misfortune. In this chiefly Hindu majority area, there are many grievances, the major one being around the step-motherly treatment to this region by the J&K administration. Always in the policy planning Jammu gets a backseat and Kashmir valley the priority.
Also, emigrating pundits from the valley has been misrepresented and complex issue of ethno-regional-Pakistan intervention issue has been presented as a communal one. The emigration of Pundits, a tragic story, has been used by the RSS combine to the hilt to create a communal atmosphere. In this scenario the discontent in the valley because of reversal of land transfer came in as triggering cause and the dam of discontent burst. This in turn affected the lives of people in the valley
While it seems the Jammu agitation cuts across the political lines, surely it is the BJP associates who are in the driver's seat and others have meekly surrendered to this agita-tion.
The central government is playing its old role of silent spectator, helplessly watching separatists and communalists stoke the fires on both the sides. This is akin to its role in opening the gates of Babri Mosque and playing fiddle when the Mosque was being demolished by RSS and company.
Today many ideologues are arguing that “Azadi" is the solution; some of them are arguing that economically people of the State stand to benefit if the old trade routes to Pakistan are normalised.
In this charged up atmosphere and this strategically located area, is it not overdue the wishes of regions, dialogue between all concerned parties are the guiding reason rather than the legalistic and 'blind nationalist’ approaches?
J&K acceded to India, but at the same time one has to realise that right from the beginning the autonomy which was promised in the treaty of accession, was never honoured and the clauses of the treaty were violated with impunity.
New Delhi thus has two political fronts to deal with, one Muslim and one Hindu. Any concessions it might offer to those protesting in Srinagar will provide fodder to the equally noisy protesters in Jammu.
What's more, the Hindu rightwing Bharatiya Janata Party has taken the issue beyond the state of J&K into the rest of India, and seems set to make it an election issue during the general elections expected at the beginning of next year. Because of the protests, the state elections have been put off until next year.
Despite the UN’s failure in Kashmir, the presence of United Nations Military’ Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) office in Kashmir continues to symbolically affirm the Kashmiri sentiment that their land is not yet another Indian State but an internationally recognized disputed territory and that their cause is a historical and just one.
The words 'United Nations', 'Self-determination' and Plebiscite' have become integral to the Kashmiri political lexicon. Though the UN has failed in bringing about a solution to the Kashmir riddle, its past involvement in Kashmir Conflict has undoubtedly provided legitimacy and strength to the separatist argument in Kashmir.
Ironically, on the one hand Kashmiri separatism has drawn strength from the UN resolutions but on the other hand framing the Kashmir conflict as an India-Pakistan (Inter-State) conflict in the UN has, prevented international recognition of the Kashmiri nationalist movement as the defining characteristic of the presentday Kashmirconflict.
One would like to hope that all these complexities and grievances of the people of Jammu, the people of Kashmir valley form the basis of peaceful and just solution to the present turmoil in the state.
The author is columnist and researcher