At the base of the Gupkar Road ascent is situated National Conference’s Home-Headquarter: it falls on the left. Just at the top of this ascent is PDP’s Home-Headquarter: to the right. The road ends with Governor House; burial ground of Kashmir’s politics. But it all begins from Lal Chowk, where the grand ceremony-of-slaughter was held long back. This is the graphic portrayal of Kashmir’s politics.
Lal-Chowk is where the murder happened, and Lal Chowk is where it can finally resurrect. Governor House is the haunting, and hunting, ground where ghosts live to not let other live. The two Home-Headquarters are the dumping sites of the guilt.
In 2014, the year of last Assembly elections, the site named PDP was aglow. Persons from other belongings – belongings! – including NC, drew to this site like moths. Now PDP is like a burnt out candle, its own blackness smeared in the middle of its deformed, useless remnants. This time NC is aglow, and moths know where the flame is.
Is our politics squeezed to a small distance between the two gates – PDP and NC. The ghost ahead signals, No. It is time some more dispersed spots were created to distribute the guilt. Individuals – known, barely known, and not at all known – will sprout like weeds in the weeks and months ahead. Some small groups are also expected to coalesce. The Local Bodies elections have already done the job. It means the guilt too should disappear.
This week when NC was abuzz welcoming the deserters, we might think of giving NC a chance, like we did in 2014 with PDP. After all a civilian government is a lesser evil: and it’s. And then if a Kashmir centric party wins, it keeps Delhi half a step away: may be it does. Some might argue that the time to consolidate electoral power of Kashmir in one party has come, as we have tasted the bitter by splitting our vote into PDP and NC. Yes, we have.
Well, give it a chance or don’t, but it is an explanation that might work yesterday. Today the extremist Hindu rightwing politics has tasted power in Kashmir. They are into the inner recesses, thanks to PDP and its think-tank – lawyer, bureaucrat, economist, and politician. New Delhi, and its agencies, have succeeded in raising loyal individuals who can’t even breath without the master’s prod. A wicked material interest, and consequent vulnerability of the Persons, Groups, and Parties who are in the fray, is mathematically designed to move the politics in disparate directions. So a gathering of politics around any of these – Persons, Groups, and Parties – is a long shot in dark. A prevalent atmosphere of violence can even stretch the matters beyond secrete arm twisting: some manifest violence can also occur.
So where do we go from here.
This is a zero point of our politics. The elements are laid bare. The powers that rule us are out in the open. The “sheer intensity of evil renders them, for a brief time, almost visible.” This is one such moment of visibility; nakedness.
How do we deal with this naked. Fall for it, and commit the sin. That is one. Lower the gaze and walk out, two. Or else pick up a stone and punish the guilty, third. We have done all the three, but the naked is unmoved. Electoral politics – NC and PDP – is a shameless failure. Resistance politics – from PF to JRL – is a tale of running loss. And the armed movement, less said the better.
Some elaboration.
The easiest, and the laziest, answer is to walk out of this politics, and dump this squalid bag of rotten eggs – Congress, BJP, NC, PDP – deep underneath some muck-land. Plainly, boycott. But howsoever hard you try the smell wafts out from the grave. As long as there is vacuum in our politics, the stink easily rushes in. This practice of boycott we used in the days of Plebiscite Movement only to realise later that many layers of stink were already thick and settled. We again tried it from 1990s till this moment, but results are more horrible than earlier. The stupor of situation disallows us to evaluate the dangers of this boycott. And then the ring of sacred thrown around it by our respected Geelani Sahab has elevated the politics of boycott almost to a dogma. That is unfortunate, to say the least. Sometime, sooner or later, we will rue the day we adopted this creed.
There is a second option: pick up arms and chase the occupier away. We tried this option in the early 1990s. Just some years, and the backlash was too much to withstand. We didn’t completely give it up, but after 2016 we are again riding on the waves of armed. Before this armed insurrection creates anything, its first shot hits our politics straight in the head.
There is a third option. Popular movements: people in millions pouring into streets. We had three in this decade – 2008, 2010, and 2016. Those were the moments when our politics writhed to break waters. All the three times it miscarried.
We need to pause here and ask ourselves, why? With that will begin our journey towards politics. Towards Lal Chowk, the spot where it can resurrect.
Column ends, conversation continues.
Tailpiece: PDP is down in the dumps, NC is going great guns. The king is dead, long live the king. But in our case when did the king live.
mrvaid@greaterkashmir.com