In the debate surrounding the current spate of unrest in Kashmir, the root cause for once seems to have decisively been traced to the fundamental aspiration of Azadi among the people in Valley. Refreshingly enough, a small degree of realization has also crept into TV debates which otherwise put all sorts of obfuscations and interpretations on any unrest in Valley. But what has so far escaped the attention is the transformation of the new youthful generation of Kashmir as the new vanguard of the two decade long separatist movement in Valley. And how did this happen?  Did anybody ever mention the name of former J&K governor S K Sinha?  After all, it is his controversial tenure that by the time of its end in 2008 drove Valley to mass rebellion. And this is something that needs to be taken into account to get a fair assessment of the ongoing turmoil in Valley.

Sinha did two things to Kashmir. One, he presided over the gradual dismantling of the already thin confidence in New Delhi. Second, and more importantly he became the agent for the transfer of the separatist sentiment to the new generation of youth. He thus politicized what until then was arguably Kashmir's most apolitical generation. Though bred under the shadow of guns and gun-battles, this was a generation that was conspicuous by its absence from protests and processions. And this was one of the major factors for the relative quiet on the Kashmir streets through middle part of the first decade of the new millennium. But Amarnath groundswell changed all this. Sinha's unsubtle ways of going about his job, riding in the process roughshod over the elected government and the insecurities of the majority community, showed an overarching authority in action. One which was determined to have its way, come what the people may think.

To understand the damage inflicted by Sinha, one needs only to understand the historical, political and social discourse that make up the Kashmiri psyche. An ordinary Kashmiri steps into an unsettled sense of national identity right from the day he acquires his political consciousness. He lives among three simultaneous political discourses - Indian, Pakistani and Kashmiri - and is witness to their compromises, clashes and overlapping.

Somehow Pakistan with all its flaws has become a forbidden El Dorado and India a scheming, malign entity with at best a colonial approach towards Kashmir. Amidst the reigning uncertainty in the state, the suspicious approach towards New Delhi   is now  the only political certainty.  New Delhi is seen as the country that reneged on its promise of plebiscite despite being a signatory to the United Nations resolutions on the state. India is also seen as a country that rules the state through its foisted governments. New Delhi is also accused of giving Kashmir at best a sham democracy. Surprisingly, this perception survives despite the recent overwhelming participation in the polls.

This deep sense of alienation has not only secular underpinnings but is also communal in nature. And the crude majoritarianism of Hindu rightwing outfits, always talking in terms of a willful control of the state, coupled with an ever-widening Jammu-Srinagar divide along communal lines has strengthened this narrative.  And finally there has always been this mortal paranoia about being swamped by the majority community in India. This paranoia is historic in the sense that it didn't leave untouched even the National Conference founder Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah who too sought guarantees under Article 370 before acceding to India.

What Sinha therefore wittingly or unwittingly did was to play on these very insecurities. His solution for ending the alienation in Kashmir was to deepen it. He seemed driven by one simplistic messianic zeal to bridge the gulf. His formula as he himself wrote in an article later was easy:  to resurrect a particular version of Kashmiriyat and Sufi Islam as if all it needed was a governor's intervention. And this he sought to achieve by aggressively promoting Amarnath yatra, prepare a blue print for establishing religious universities, involve army in the repair and reconstruction of Sufi shrines, set up a Kashmir studies department in Kashmir university with an aim to subsume Kashmir history under larger historical narrative of the country. And in all this grand mission, he acted without any reference to the elected government of the time

Sinha's actions took on multifarious connotations: First, his undue display of seriousness about his job as SASB chairman and willful extension of yatra to two months, even in the teeth of opposition from the state government  fundamentally altered the local perceptions  about this otherwise traditional annual pilgrimage. His actions - whether deliberate or as a matter of course - played on a perennial vague suspicion in Kashmir about some grand design  to change the demography of the state.  However, another hush-hush decision to transfer some forest land to SASB completely broke the trust.
And this time the sense of insecurity was felt by the youth in their teens and twenties, Kashmir’s own generation of conflict. A generation which while not fond of India was, however, indifferent to the need to commit its allegiance to either New Delhi or Islamabad.  A generation which was yet to make a sense of the prevailing reality and had therefore deferred the judgment on the bitter political baggage of the state. It was too much wrapped up in its youthful pre-occupations to think of anything else. That is, until Sinha gave them a bitter dose of reality check. That too around a transitional time when they were in the process of forming their worldview. Comparison might sound odious to many years in New Delhi but Sinha played a role much akin to that of Ariel Sharon in Palestine which unleashed a second Palestinian Intifada.

 An overwhelming perception of the governor acting in a crudely partisan manner and flaunting brazenly a Hindutvistic mindset - evoking in the process the worst existential fears of the majority community in Valley - brought the youth out and out in droves to defy him and defend their interests. His pro-active pursuit of his job as the chairman of the Shri Amarnath Board, often to the detriment of his responsibility as the State's governor bred deep suspicions. Being a federal representative in Kashmir, his actions were seen as part of some covert political agenda of the government in the Centre. The seething unrest that followed, lapsing soon into an unremitting Azadi groundswell became also a moment of the transmission of the sentiment. And it is this generation which since rules the streets of Kashmir. Bred in the womb of the conflict, the blood and bitterness of the two decades, it has little regard for fear and the diplomacy and the deception of its leaders. This generation thinks it can pull off impossible things on its own. It is ready to defy and of course to die. This is why even the loss of 58 lives hasn't dented a bit the spirit and the blazing energy of the current upsurge.

Lastupdate on : Tue, 17 Aug 2010 21:30:00 Mecca time
Lastupdate on : Tue, 17 Aug 2010 18:30:00 GMT
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