Prof Hari Om
On July 8, the security forces and J&K Police liquidated dreaded Hizbul Muhahideen’s poster boy in Kashmir, Burhan Wani, in the Kokarnag area of South Kashmir. He was one of the most wanted terrorists and carried on his head a reward of Rs 10 lakh. He was involved in many heinous anti-state acts and was also responsible for the killing of more than 10 persons, including security forces personnel. Besides being the Hizbul Mujahideen’s commander in Kashmir, Wani was also in touch with Lashkar-e-Toiba chief Hafiz Sayeed, the mastermind of the 9/11 dreaded Mumbai terror attacks. Burhan Wani had made optimum use of social networking sites and made his intentions public. He had repeatedly said that the Indian Army was his “prime enemy” and that he and his gang of highly indoctrinated terrorists will not spare Jammu and Kashmir police personnel as they were “helping the occupying force in Kashmir”.
It was expected that the killing of Burhan Wani will be exploited by Pakistan and its Kashmir-based agents and mercenaries like Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Yasin Malik, as also by the arch-political rivals of Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti such as National Conference working president and Leader of Opposition in the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly Omar Abdullah and the desperate Sonia Congress to further vitiate the atmosphere in Kashmir and heighten hate and break-India activities. And it happened. They all unleashed a no-holds-barred propaganda blitz against the Indian state and their single-point agenda was to create a situation that would force New Delhi to quit Kashmir. In other words, their sinister game plan was to exploit the situation in a manner that would cause another communal partition of India. (India is the only country in the world which was divided in 1947 on the ground that particular areas were Muslim-majority like Jammu and Kashmir is a State where the Muslims constitute about 60 per cent of the state’s total population.)
The hostile neighbour and its Kashmir-based agents plus some so-called mainstream Kashmiri leaders backed to the hilt by the local media and certain Delhi-based media houses not only sought to make Burhan Wani a hero out of dreaded terrorist but also created a situation that left the authorities with no other option but to impose curfew in Kashmir immediately after the killing of Burhan Wani and it continues unabated since then. And there are reasons to believe that Pakistan, which declared Burhan Wani a “Kashmir’s hero and martyr” and which on July 20 observed “black day” to express solidarity with Kashmiri separatists and “mainstream” Kashmiri leaders like Omar Abdullah, who described the dreaded terrorist an “icon” of Kashmir will do all that they could to keep fire burning in the Valley through their evil-intentioned campaign. Their intentions are evil.
The authorities in the state and at the Centre have to be very careful and the security forces operating in Kashmir against heavy odds have to be on their toes 24×7 to ensure that Pakistani sinister game plan and Kashmiri separatists’ break-India moves are defeated and defeated very comprehensively. It is a war-like situation in Kashmir and it has to be tackled as such. Ambivalence, chicken-hearted approach or weak signals at this critical juncture would only help the enemies of the nation. It’s question of the very survival and existence of the Indian nation. Remember, if Jammu and Kashmir falls, Indian nation will also break into smithereens. Unfortunately, the July 20 debate on Kashmir in the Rajya Sabha and July 21 debate on Kashmir in the Lok Sabha was not really inspiring. For, no lawmaker from either side tried to diagnose what ailed Kashmir. It was all rhetoric, lop-sided approach and insistence on a policy that would consider Kashmiri Muslims a race apart. While the opposition in one voice batted for more and more political concessions to Kashmir, those on the treasury benches disappointed the nation by not calling the Kashmiri bluff and by talking about that “Kashmiriyat” which had cleaned the Valley of almost all the Kashmiri Hindus and created the whole mess in Kashmir.
Not just this, our lawmakers without mincing words charged the security forces with using excessive force without realizing the difficult situation they had been operating to defeat the evil forces and save Kashmir for India. The Parliament debate on Kashmir virtually suggested that our lawmakers were not on the side of the Army and other security forces who had been fighting splendidly and as per the directions of the establishment and exigency of the time. On the contrary, the debate suggested that our lawmakers were on the other side. This is the way the world ends not with bang but with whimper.
The point is the Indian state and the Indian nation have been responding differently. The bleeding Indian nation wants, and rightly, a pro-active policy designed to defeat Pakistan and restore peace in the Valley using all available means and the Indian state is behaving like a weak and meek state. That the Indian nation has not been happy with the custodians of the Indian state could be seen from its highly critical response through the social networking sites. Hardly anyone outside the government has endorsed the official line on Kashmir and Pakistan as well as its approach towards the spurt in terror related activities in the Valley which has been witnessing anti-India activities, including the waving of ISIS and Pakistan flags every Friday in the Valley under the very nose of the law and order authorities, for many months now. The Indian nation has not only been critical of the present dispensation in New Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir but also against the opposition, which instead of playing the role of a watchdog has been taking political mileage out of the situation that is alarming and dangerous.
It would not be out of place to mention here that all those who spoke in the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha only talked about Kashmir, which is the most prosperous, developed and politically very powerful region in the country and pitched for “meaningful dialogue” with Kashmiri leadership so that their urges could be satisfied. None talked about Jammu and Ladakh, which constitute almost half of the state’s population and occupy over 89 per cent of the state’s land area. No one talked about the latest migration of Kashmiri Hindus and the barbarities committed on then by the terrorists and separatists. And no one talked about the miseries, sufferings and problems of the Amarnath yatris. This approach will not do. Kashmir is a communal problem and it has to be tackled as such. Similarly, the scourge of terrorism has to be eliminated at all costs. There is no other way.
Forces have to neutralize the terrorists one by one. Wani is only the beginning, not the end. The stakes are very high for India in Jammu and Kashmir. It has been rightly said: “If we lose this battle, we have lost the soul of secular India. It is not about a piece of real estate. Kashmir is where the idea of Pakistan should be comprehensively defeated and buried”.
