JAMMU: Time has come to call the bluff of anti-India forces in Kashmir. They have mastered in twisting facts to project the nation in bad light. The recent-floods are latest example of how such elements exploited the situation and hijacked the agenda to their advantage. With tacit support of the ruling alliance and the main opposition, they have nearly succeeded in making people to believe that ‘Indians’-the Army, the Indian Air Force and the National Disaster Management Response Force-left the marooned people in various Srinagar localities in lurch.
[box type=”note” fontsize=”12″ radius=”10″]Much water has flown down the Jhelum since 1990 in Kashmir. The people around the world have got to know about the state of affairs in the Valley, which is why there is no sympathy for the so-called cause being espoused by the harbourers of terrorists.[/box]
They have gone further in their mischief to convince the people that rescue operations were actually launched to evacuate the tourists, the outsiders, the employees in security zones etcetera and not the members of a particular community. Due to power failure in the Valley in the wake of unprecedented floods, the people could not view on television channels how valiantly the brave-hearts put their life to risk in saving women, children, young and elder from the worst hit areas, day in and day out. And when the life came to near normal the anti-national elements, both in separatist and mainstream camps, fed the people with poisonous propaganda that it was actually a great effort by the volunteers that saved the people.
With rescue operations over, the hardcore hawk Syed Ali Shah Geelani played smart by denouncing his earlier rhetoric of refusal to relief pouring in by the Centre, the states and other organisations from outside Kashmir. He knew any such call or statement will enrage the people, the sufferers in particular, which will shake his hegemony on Kashmir’s psyche. He coined a new terminology to justify the aid promised by Prime Minister Narinder Modi and his visiting ministers to the Valley. He described it as peoples’ right, as, according to him, India has been ‘looting the resources in Kashmir’ and the ‘Kashmiris have been paying taxes’ for the past six decades. Other secessionists took cue and started hammering India in their press statements and interactions with the people. Nobody from the government came up with a ‘fact-sheet’. Instead, a senior Congress leader started castigating the Centre for doing pretty little for the flood victims. He and his cohorts in both Congress and National Conference started eulogising the ‘volunteers’ for all the good work in flood-hit Kashmir. They willfully precipitated the anger and hatred for India.
The situation as of now in Kashmir is such that the relief coming from various channels from outside the State is being routed, interallia, through the volunteers thus leaving a space for separatists-Geelani and company-to claim that it were actually they who had undertaken this ‘noble task’ upon their shoulders. At a place where the profiteers have begun to fleece the fellow brethren and unscrupulous elements in the administration usurping the much needed relief material, the separatists or the mainstream leaders have no take. Don’t the separatists think even for a while that the material they are distributing is coming from outside the State? The glaring example of this has been set by notorious separatist Yasin Malik, who decamped with a boat and material stocked in it only to distribute among own kin in full gaze of media? The gutless (or the willing) government did not muster courage to book the chronic secessionist and put him behind bars for committing theft at a time when rescue and relief had become ‘life and death’ for the sufferers.
The latest gimmick of Syed Ali Geelani is his ‘appeal’ to workers to give priority to distribution of relief among Pandits, Sikhs, Buddhists and Christians. He is describing it as hospitality thereby making these communities as alien to Kashmir. This is not only mischievous but also an attempt to play to the galleries. No wonder the self-seekers in Indian civil society will get overawed by Geelani’s gesture. But the people beyond Banihal Tunnel know well the modus operandi of secessionists to remain relevant to the situation. They still tend to believe that people outside the State will get impressed. Such gimmick is not new in the Valley. Remember how a ‘Langer’ was established by separatists during Amarnath land row agitation in 2008 to show the world ‘how benevolent they were’. The number of those who took ‘Dal and Chawal’ at the ‘high profile Langer’ was less than the photographers covering the event.
Much water has flown down the Jhelum since 1990 in Kashmir. The people around the world have got to know about the state of affairs in the Valley, which is why there is no sympathy for the so-called cause being espoused by the harbourers of terrorists. The only problem is that the people in New Delhi don’t understand it. Had they understood the separatist psyche, this melodrama would have since ended.
