It’s now for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to retrieve situation in Kashmir. He is aware of the problem and also the solution, the only thing that he needs to do is  to act.  It is true that he was not fed with the  real situation on the ground. But  that no longer is the case.  For long, he and the Home Minister P Chidambaram were made to believe that everything was  fine in Kashmir, barring few  disgruntled elements, instigated from across the border and separatists,were  pelting stones. Nothing else. But  the Manmohan Singh Government is now having a clear sense of the situation  which is becoming more and more difficult with every passing day. 

Prime Minister’s own credibility is at risk. Therefore, he must act. He has seen  a series of double standards  in the Kashmir politics, but what’s worse is that  there was a complete distortion of facts about the obtaining situation  in Kashmir  by the people whose task was to keep  the  Centre informed about exact  developments, and why  there were protests.   Anger on the streets of Kashmir has surpassed  all limits. There is no parallel of this  in the history of  Kashmir. 

 The blame  is being  shifted from one quarter to the other. There is a complete  chaos, the thinking is muddled, ways are blocked by  while suggesting the ways out of the crisis. The direction is lost and those who wanted to gain access to a direction of reaching out to the people, were   being  fed with a self suiting an elusive solutions. 

These people still believe that they can retrieve the situation. But neither they  have the capacity nor the will to do so. In fact, they are having no connect with any of the generation in Kashmir, old or new, young  or teenagers.  The only thing that seems to have been happening with a frightening frequency is that the blood of the young is being spilled on the streets of the Valley, and each home has become a jail  for the people have lost their sense of walking with confidence and dignity in the streets. Either they are  seen as protestors with stones hiding in their fists  or  they are  signs of  once –a-week sign of normalcy. They have been reduced to  shadows. 

When shadows thicken  or widen they  only add to fear  and scare. They are afraid of themselves. They don’t know whose stone would hit whom and whose bullets in response would kill whom.   It is a new generation   - not  in their teens, but of less than 10s – whose mind is getting impacted, when they see their age group  in the protests or sit back home, warned by their parents, only to watch  gory scenes of clashes, with stones, tear smoke, bullets  and they cry out: “ it’s my neighbhourhood” and they start recognizing faces in the streets- those of their uncles next door or the class fellow or play mate. Even when this generation is sitting home, it is evolving an empathy with the people on  streets.

Prime Minister  is aware of the fact that most of the protestors are of his grand children’s age or even younger. When they are told by their parents to switch off   TVs, they  start questioning: “ what should we watch,?” Cartoon network, they refuse.

 Before they refuse and reject  each and everything  in their real life, they should  be adopted, given a lap of comfort and promise, which should have a meaning for them in Kashmir, not outside the Valley. They don’t need toys, they need real future where they  become the people of a land of peace  and just settlement.  Kashmiri children are used to playing with balls of snow, throwing snow at each other, not the rocks. But they are becoming  aware of the fact  that  there is a problem, a serious one. They want to have a sense of that, rather they are grasping the problem in their own way, where stone throwing offers them a solution.

Let there be a tomorrow for the children of Kashmir. Prime Minister should respond to their feelings and  save  them. If they are there, there would be Kashmir – not just the land but also the people.

 

How to do it?, Prime Minister may ask. Let him talk to his grand children, tell them the real story of Kashmir  as it has unfolded  before him  since 1947, when he himself was a child, the real-time images that he has seen. He should also tell them that Kashmiri children, in the words of UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi,  is a generation that has  seen violence and has been brutalized.

Alternative is:   view   all the children of Kashmir as the grandsons and grand daughters, look at them, hear them, then decide what needs to be done  and how to confer dignity  on  them, their parents, and grandparents, the answers would not be difficult to find. Please try it, Sir. Otherwise, there is a clear danger  that these shadows  will get larger  both in space and time.