Rarely has the valley, at least the part of it I have been staying in these past few days, looked as lush and green as it does at the moment, nature’s gift, as it were, after the scanty snowfall of the winter just gone, which has left the mountains singularly bereft of snow, a warning of sorts of a drier summer. Srinagar still struggling to shake of the dust and grime of the 2014 floods too has managed to put on a fresher look. That’s not to say that the summer capital is looking any smarter. If the anything it bears more the look of a city in a state of eternal disrepair.
Unfinished road stretches, some promising to look at, and road stretches yet looking more like forgotten bits off unfinished, forgotten projects hit probably by the favoured excuse of “no funds”. Mind you this is no drain inspector’s report that I am intent to pen down. Part of the effort is to bring home the fact that nature with one bit of generosity appears willing to restore to the valley its pristine glory –just with a wee bit of rain. And all the carnage we, the human race, are only too willing to inflict on the self-same “paradise’ of some poet’s image. And much as I wished to take in as much as I could of the nature’s bounty, hardly did a day or night of the five I have passed here in the valley already pass without reminding me of the misery that life can bring in its train in most parts of the valley and nowhere as severely in South Kashmir. Not a moment passes, thanks to the persistence of the social media, without your being made conscious of one incident or the other, of “cordon and conquer”.
Conquer I am not using in the literal sense but conquest is what the forces engaged in downing a few militants cooped up in a house, would love to see each such operation to end up as. Collateral damage in material terms as much as in terms of civilian losses seem to be of little concern. Callousness, has come to be the most distinctive feature of the Authority’s attitude, both those wearing the khaki or OGs of the security forces or the civvies both from the ruling or aspiring political class. Add to this the debilitating conflict embellished with all the communal overtones and you have a perfect combination for the never ending, menacing to the core, of unceasing strife. Religion, so I need to assert is the new weapon which, like it or not, is currently the favoured tool in the hands of those who speak in the name of the majority community and who, believe it or not, have assumed the right to decide who is a patriot, a nationalist, a believer in in Hindu Rashtra. A tragic situation to be in for a nation that never tires preaching universal peace and brotherhood to the rest of the world and yet pushing itself and its overwhelmingly poor population into a corner, the “mool mantra” (raison d’etre) of whose existence would be hate and intolerance. And mind you, it is not as if the Hindu rashtravadis have left the enemy unidentified. Talking to a Kashmiri audience it shouldn’t be difficult to explain how even after three months every effort is made in one part of the State to keep the highly emotive communal aspect of the Kathua incident alive. Not just alive but in a manner that can at any given time explode.
The Ministers and party seniors who were either retired or simply asked to pipe down one bit have only become more strident. The valley where Muslims outnumber the Hindus of the State put together — and I am not talking here of the larger issue of militancy –are virtually asked to lump the ignominy. Anti-terror or anti-militancy is another issue’ an equally serious one at that, but then as any sane person including politician and brass hat will tell you the solution to ending the militancy does not lie via the barrel of the gun. It will come through negotiations. Srinagar and its mentors in Delhi could make a start from within the territory its writ runs in. Yes, as one of the present ruling party’s founders had said it many years ago, when the party tasted power in New Delhi the first time, negotiations were the way out. They didn’t hesitate even talking to the Hurriyat. It’s rather odd that the same party which shares power in the State with a local party in Kashmir is unwilling to talk. For the sake of peace in the region I do hope and pray that it is not the old pathological incompatibility with the Kashmiri Muslim community that comes in the way of its adopting a less than hostile attitude towards the State generally, and the valley in particular. Meanwhile, fanfares and tourist melas staged by the State Government in other parts of the country, in the hope of attracting tourists, look like no hopers.
The search and cordon operations in the valley that set the wires on fire each day, courtesy the media, the patriotic Delhi-based variety, hardly make the valley look an attractive proposition. The week I have been in the valley, an unofficial enumerator of sorts, shows me most hotels reporting a maximum of five to six percent occupancy. The houseboats are all decked up for the season but,sadly, there ain’t many takers around. That much for the exaggerated and largely mindless reportage of the battlefield Kashmir !