Dost Khan
JAMMU: Peace has again become elusive in Kashmir while trouble seems to be just a call distance. Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Yasin Malik and their herd of India bashers and blackmailers have set a stage for show down; this time over issues that could not even remotely be considered potential enough to derail normal life in the Valley. Geelani has taken up mobile telephony issue while Yasin Malik is hammering over the alleged Indian attempts of demographic change being perpetrated by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Both these issues are so trivial but so critical that these can turn out to be dynamite in days to come.
The question arises why Pakistan lackeys are raking up these issues when common people in the Valley were preparing for big tourism season after fractured one last year due to rains and subsequent floods. This must be secessionists’ way of snubbing BJP regime at the Centre over its open offer of talks for ‘addressing internal and external dimensions of the so-called Kashmir issue’. BJP, at the insistence of PDP, has offered an olive branch to Pakistani agents in the Valley by making them stakeholders. The Agenda of Alliance of the two parties has emboldened separatists so much that they feel themselves indispensable. Iron is cast and now it upon Geelani and his ilk to mould it they way they wish.
So far, the people of Kashmir have responded with sanity and sagacity to these provocations taking place in quick succession. In their pursuit for peace they have given reason a chance. But, this has not gone well with the Messiahs of doom. They are annoyed; they are angry and they are perturbed over everything moving so smoothly. They are equally disturbed to find the people craving and praying for peace, and taking a sigh of relief with yet another day of the summer passing on peacefully. What is peace for people in the trouble-torn valley is pain for them, as calm does not fit well with their agenda.
In such a situation, can the peace hold for a long in Kashmir? This is haunting every mind in the valley, especially at a time when the peace breakers are devising innovative machinations to grill the government and put the valley again on boil?
With people being taken back to the Stone Age by targeting mobile telephony, the secessionists are making a determined bid to portray India as a villain. Geelani has cheeks to dare the Centre. Yasin Malik and his paid agents are roaming over the Srinagar streets with full throttled anti-India slogans. Nobody is raising a finger; not even the BJP that had been pretending as the sole custodian of national interest. Power politics has mowed down them so much that they feel reconciled and elated with moving in the cities and countryside to be in print by assuring development and liberal central assistance. They have no time to ponder over what all is happening in the Valley and how Indian sovereignty is openly being challenged by anti-national elements.
On the contrary, PDP is playing its cards very well. They are bringing home the point that they stand on the agenda they had espoused ahead of elections, notwithstanding frequent retreats being made over various sensitive issues. They are playing victimhood and their constituency believes that as well. This has been admitted by Syed Ali Geelani as well. There is a method in all that happens in the Valley. There seems to be a complete cohesion among India bashers, be they on this or the opposite side of the fence. Indian interest stands marginalised in Jammu and Kashmir, unfortunately at a time when BJP is partnering government in the State.
