What Went Wrong In Kashmir And How To Fix It

History seems sometimes to move with the infinite slowness of a glacier and sometimes to rush forward in a torrent, Lord Louis Mount batten once remarked. Nowhere is this more true than in Kashmir, where history has sometimes stood absolutely still. It has been as impassive as the snowcapped massifs surrounding the Valley that make it, as the Mughal emperor Jehangir observed, “a garden of eternal spring or an iron fort to the palace o kings".

- Raj Chengappa

History also periodically flows with the speed of river rapids in Kashmir, engulfing the vale in strife and blood, as it is doing now. After Kashmir erupted in protest on July 8, when Burhan Wani, the poster boy of the new militancy, was killed in an encounter with security forces, over 71 people, including two policemen, have died. As the agitation gathered momentum, close to 7,000 people were injured with 500 of them being treated for eye injuries, caused by the ‘non-lethal’ pellets fired by security forces to disperse stone-throwing mobs. The 50-day cur- few may finally have been lifted on August 29, but the calm is deceptive. Much of the populace, particularly the youth, is seething with resentment. The situation remains fragile, the future uncertain.

History also offers an eerie sense of dejavu in Kashmir. As the mammoth 35-member all-party delegation, led by Union home minister Rajnath Singh, tours the Valley from September 4 in an effort to understand the turmoil and start the process of reconciliation, it will not be the first such attempt in recent years. In 2010, when the Valley had erupted in anger over an alleged fake encounter by security forces, an all-party delegation, led by then Union home minister P. Chidambaram, had toured the area to soothe a volatile situation.

Such is the imagery that Kashmir evokes that even the stern-looking Rajnath turned poetic about the mission of his all-party delegation to restore “peace and normalcy”. Before he left for Srinagar, Rajnath told India today, “Humein sirf Kashmir ki zameen se hi mohabbat nahin hai, Kashmir ke logon se bhi mohabbat hai. Hum Kashmir ka sthayi samadhan nikalenge, lekin ismein samay lag sakta hai (We don’t only love the land of Kashmir, we love the people of Kashmir too. We are working on a long-term solution, but it may take some time).”