Col Satish Singh Lalotra
Name of Book: ‘Guns under my
Chinar-Kashmir’s Covert Wars’— A Recap.
Author : A M Watali
‘You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks if only you attack places which are undefended’—SUN TZU.
The genesis of terrorism in a region or state can be very safely traced back to its tumultuous socio-political cum Geo-political standing in the past that had within itself seeds of dissension which germinated into a full-fledged tree owing to these dissensions going unregistered in their resolution. Something of a similar nature brewed up in the erstwhile state of Jammu & Kashmir fanned by forces inimical to its progress and on road to recovery right from the time it gained independence in 1947 till date. The visible manifestation of terrorism growing out from the confines of violent thinking to that of a force having within its realm to consume all and everybody coming in its way is the typical firing of the first shot or the first bomb going its way targeting innocent people snuffing out their lives. Since the region is already primed up like a powder keg for the past many decades, it is the smallest of pretext bordering on going against the majority opinion that acts as the detonator for the entire environment to be hurled into a massive conflagration symbolizing advent of terrorism. In Punjab, the Baisakhi Sikh-Nirankari clash in 1978 at Amritsar was the flash point for the entire state to go into an era of dark days of militancy cum terrorism signaling the will of the people being spewed out from the barrels of guns and rocket launchers against the ruling class. In Kashmir that era can be safely alluded to an unending series of strikes, demonstrations, and attacks on the reach of GOI In 1988.
In the recently launched book of his- ‘Guns under my Chinar–Kashmir’s Covert wars’, Ali Mohammed Watali IPS and ex-police chief in Kashmir has scripted an excellent first-hand account of the evil scheming that went by in the garb of an all-encompassing militancy in the northern most part of India. With as wide a canvas as it would take an eye witness to myriad events in Jammu & Kashmir spanning his entire professional career, the brush of Watali has painted an exquisite picture of terrorism in the erstwhile state of J&K filling its minutest of details with his memoirs through a vast cast of anti-nationals & their misdeeds intricately woven with covert and overt activities. ‘Guns under my Chinar -Kashmir’s covert wars’ couldn’t have been released at a more better time than a few months back on 5 th April 2024 , just on the anvil of the general elections for the country that were held in the month of May this year. The book is in fact a personification as well as symbolic narration of all wrong doings that were the makings of great leaders spanning decades of monumental neglect and utter double speak in further complicating the proverbial Gordian knot going by the name of ‘Jammu & Kashmir. This creation by Watali is a perfect beacon of hope and guide for the new team of Modi occupying the exalted positions at Raisina hills to get their act together and go back to the drawing board of solving the now almost 4 decades old militancy with a fresh perspective. The book’s opening page is indexed with the ‘contents’ containing the pages marked from 1(one) till 228 (two hundred and twenty eight). Surprisingly the book of such seminal importance is having an introduction limited to just one page. It has in total 6(six) chapters starting from chapter 1 dedicated to ‘Trajectory of resistance’ ( Free Kashmir) that scripts an entire range of events, characters, places, circumstances, double speak, treachery etc all rolled into one which begin their journey from partition of India, the author as a spectator while studying in SP College at Srinagar recounts how the SS (Special staff) of JKP headed by Sheikh Ghulam Qadir Ganderbali had raided the premises of the Rajas of Zachaldara and Rajpura -the Jagirdars (feudatories of Maharaja) who were quintessential the harbingers of sowing the seeds of sedition and secession in Jammu and Kashmir by siding with Pakistan in getting arms and ammunition into the erstwhile state. The subsequent chapter going by the name of ‘Three Aces’ delve upon the first bank robbery by Al Fatah on 02 Jan 1971 in Kashmir valley , breakthrough in its resolution , rise of various double agents like Zahgir who was involved in 1967 the first killing of BSF sentry Charan Dass at Nawa Kadal , the split in Al Fatah organization & its wiping out make an interesting read.
The later chapters like ‘Spur of the moment’ ,’ Freedom movement in PoK’, Ominous vibes, and lastly ‘Big games’ are rather snippets of various landmark events often laced with terror mongering from across the border and even within the state of J& K , their casting an ominous shadow on the shape of events and how were they handled all make up for the remaining portion of the book.
The narrative of the book though quite racy and packed with lots of personal interactions of the author with defining moments in the long history of turbulence in Jammu & Kashmir looks to be a patch work of important events viz the first bank robbery by the infamous Al Fatah to the failed assassination bid of Indira Gandhi to the brutal lynching of Ayub Pandit , Watali offers gripping accounts that go deep into the heart of the strife that has engulfed the valley since 1947. The peculiarity of this book is that the narrative often gets entangled in a web of names like ‘Akbar Jasoos’, Zahgir the supremo and such like characters emerging from each page, yet departing without much details, nuances, and descriptions leaving the readers to sift through the pages to understand the context. Yet when a discerning reader navigates through this maze of narratives the revelation that dawns upon him is that long before the manifestation of terrorist’s bullets whizzing through the vale of Kashmir there existed a cadre of underground under-ground workers and ideologues ,while the authorities blissfully unaware of the impending storm. Published by the famous ‘Rupa publications’ New Delhi , the book is available both in paperback and hard cover version. The cover design by Swar Khosla has been very intelligently done up encapsulating the storyline which depicts Chinar forests with an orange-red hue and armed men taking positions behind chinar trees. It has a short epilogue at the end of the book with a bibliography and list of abbreviations too. Priced at modest Rs 595/- the book is well within the reach of an ordinary buyer.
‘Guns under my Chinar’ itself doesn’t form much of a coherent narrative as explained by me above, but overall it will be an important supplementary source for future histories of this turbulent place of India. Notwithstanding the infirmities of the book in its cohesiveness of the narration, it will be a guiding light for the present dispensation both at New Delhi and Srinagar to fall back to its pages to draw lessons which have been forgotten by the time and tide of the events.
(The writer is a retired army officer)
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