An unclaimed letter from some unidentified source through some unknown quarters creates unrest. Strange! As was rumoured around that Sikhs are asked either to join the struggle, convert to Islam or quit. Nothing can be as flimsy as this in a valley where not even in the heydays of militancy any section was given a choice to join the camp or pack up. Well, it set off a ripple for obvious reasons that it had something new to it.
Whether it was the handiwork of some agencies, (the craziest statement on any such development we often come across) or just a poor mischief played by some anonymous individual or group, but it did cause a disquiet. Even in countries like America flights get cancelled on a petty phone call. Caller threatens to hijack and to avoid the risk massive security arrangements are being made. That is how the whole system of security is vulnerable to an effortless jape. So to deliberate as to why was a letter issued would be to add to the same frivolity it actually merits. Forcing a community  to covert or quit has not even happened in history the way we are taught through books or the way such great upheavals have been documented. Such stories of persecution and conversion too could not avoid that inevitable touch of exaggeration before they could travel all the way to reach us.
What genuinely bothers one is not that why the sensation hit us at the very first place. It does as it has that required punch to do that. Anything that disrupts the normal thinking makes a news and so has it made. What is really dismaying in all this is the swiftness New Delhi and the state government showed to meet the crisis which were no crisis at all. It takes sixty Kashmiri lives to cause some murmurs in the parliament and make a prime minister `reach out' to the people. But to the success of a prankster who might have shot a letter to see what happens, the head of a state alongwith the whole cabinet stands up against this imminent threat. Sure, the possibility of something sinister happening, can't always be ruled out. But what pains a common Kashmiri is the indifference to the loss of human lives on one count and a promptitude to react against a mere warning which anybody can shoot from a dubious source to kill his boredom.
It sounds more ridiculous in the backdrop of Amarnath yatra which concluded peacefully even though Kashmir kept burning all these months. Four and a half lac yatries arrived and departed. Not even a single unpleasant incident happens in between which might have been apprehended in a charged atmosphere like this. More than sixty innocents getting killed on the streets, state using all its force to crush the anger but still the limits of fury were confined to the roadside. That is something which must shake up those who still sweat out to give this plain political problem a deliberate communal diversion. We are happy that Kashmir proved peaceful for pilgrims even if it wasn't so peaceful for natives themselves. That makes this Sikh warning sensation sound even more farcical.
Communalism has never been and can't never be a problem in Kashmir. Our society at large is antagonistic to such kinds of perversions. Yes, if minorities in Kashmir suffered it was not primarily because of their belonging to a minority section. It was a wave that engulfed all - indiscriminately. Majority suffered in majority. So the very argument that Hindus and Sikhs are a target or were ever a target just because of their being non-Muslims is inherently hollow. Isolated events can't reflect a collective reality. Though designs of disruption can't be brushed aside, but our social matrix is too resilient to absorb the shocks of division. Hate of hate-mongers apart, Kashmir on the whole has stood and will always stand for co-existence. Peaceful co-existence.
Communalizing Kashmir means Criminalizing Kashmir.

Lastupdate on : Sat, 28 Aug 2010 21:30:00 Mecca time
Lastupdate on : Sat, 28 Aug 2010 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Sun, 29 Aug 2010 00:00:00 IST