Bloody Disruptions

It is not the first time, and one feels very sad to convince himself that it won’t be the last, that a family was wiped out in a single blast at the LoC. We have passed through these tragedies, and there seems no end to it in sight. But this tragedy has brought focus back to that original guilt which the political leadership of the undivided India cannot escape from. Who is responsible for how much of this tragedy is not a debate here. The point one wants to make is how the impact of the horrible disruption, called Partition, can be minimised. Mehbooba Mufti, as the CM of the state of J&K, made right noise by stating the obvious. On her visit to Mendhar, to meet the family which on Sunday lost five members in the firing on LoC, Mehbooba Mufti urged India and Pakistan to talk to resolve their issues so that peace was restored on the borders. She blamed partition for this ill fate of the people living on the LoC, or IB, in particular, and the entire state of J&K in general. We know history can’t be undone, but there is a thing called future that can always be worked on, and made better. Power politics, and historic narratives apart, the core of partition can be explained through the prism of disruption of relationships. This disruption, even after people on both sides are now generations away from that event, has not been repaired. When the CM urges the two sovereign states to talk out their differences and save the people of J&K from the curse of violence, she is just scratching the surface. The two countries have talked before as well, but the moment we expect a change for good, things slip back into the same old quagmire of animosity, and the consequent violence. It is better we go beneath the surface, and work on the depth of this issue. Deep down it is a problem of perceiving the other as threat. We have a problem of looking at each other as enemies. Unless these enemy images are dispelled, nothing worthwhile is going to come out of the negotiations held at different levels. These images can be given a chase only when we grant the other an unqualified right to live, and resort to restoring a just order of things. Unless a human atmosphere, rich in justice and fairness, is restored, the tragedies, like the one in Mendhar will not stop falling on us.