Dr Ajay Chrungoo
The paradoxical mindscape of Government of India is becoming more and more manifest in its affairs in Jammu and Kashmir. Its responses in Jammu and Kashmir are marked by a desperate eagerness to somehow establish the writ of the State while persisting with an alliance based on a perspective which envisages dilution of the same.
The official response to the recent gruesome terrorist attack on the Amarnath pilgrims initially sought to deflect the blame towards the pilgrims of the fateful bus by claiming that the pilgrim bus had not duly registered with the authorities. The din of the gruesome tragedy had not even died when the Union Minister of State in PM’s Office made a fantastic assertion that the militancy in Kashmir was in its ‘final phase’ and a ‘decisive headway’ has been made in the last few weeks in the battle against terrorism in the state.
The comment of ‘unregistered bus’ however was an admission, though unintended, that Kashmir has actually become a no go area for rest of Indians. Apologists for the Government will stress that the issue of due registration was meant only for Amarnath pilgrims to ensure their safety. The question that arises out of this contention is how are the rest of Indians visiting Kashmir for business, official work or as normal tourists safer than the pilgrims to Amarnath cave and require no registration and consequently no security?
Takfeeri Epidemic and widening ambit of vulnerable targets
Separatist movement In Kashmir is now driven by the imperatives of ‘Takfeeri’ ideology. Government of India has so far failed to understand its dialectics. Describing it as radicalization is underplaying its import.
Saleem Shehzad, the Pakistani journalist who dedicated his life to understanding and bringing to the fore the ideological content, strategies and inner workings of Islamists particularly the ilk of Al-Qaeda driven by the concept of Takfeer and who was killed for the same reason says that neo-Islamists , ” polarize society(Muslim)on the basis of faith and practices, before categorizing two levels of( Conflict)…Islamists versus polytheists in the Muslim world, and Islam versus the west….In practice Al-Qaeda ideologues (Takfeeris) deal with the polytheism of both the Muslim world and the West,” meaning actually the whole of non-Muslim world. Takfeer “automatically casts any Muslim majority state that has adopted a secular form of Government as heretic” and declares without any hesitation the “non-practicing Muslim an apostate”, to be dealt with death and nothing less.
The Takfeeri infection of Muslim separatism in the state has widened the ambit of the threat to all citizens of India in Jammu and Kashmir. Takfeeri terrorism holds all infidels as legitimate targets. It treats even the Muslims who are having any relationship with the infidels, their social, political systems or the Governments, as apostates deserving death.
When the HM Terrorist commander Zakir Musa threatened the separatist leaders with death for describing the Kashmir problem as a political problem rather than an Islamic cause and seeking a political solution and not an Islamic solution of building a caliphate, it was a Takfeeri declaration.
Our Governments and political parties are still far away from the realistic understanding of what is happening in J&K in the name of Jihad. For Government of India the terrorist threat is still confined to a narrow range of targets. It is mentally unprepared to stand up to the reality that a wide range of targets in Jammu and Kashmir are on the radar of terrorists guided by Takfeer. Hijacking of a tourist bus of normal or pilgrim tourists, or taking hostages in a government building full of even their co-religionists is not a remote but a distinct possibility. Driven by Takfeer, Islamists did not shirk to attack even a school in Pakistan.
Obsolete Tactical Perspectives and Denial of the Reality.
Tactical interventions of locking separatist terrorism in the economic considerations of the social sanctuary from which they operate have become obsolete in the new environment. Disrupting and destroying the age old infidel practices like Amarnath pilgrimage is more important to the Islamists than economic incentives accruing from it. They hate the stability of the infidel or apostate governments. This year’s separatist campaign has clearly demonstrated this fact.
Union Defense and Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley tried to underplay the daily shows of Islamists flaunting LeT, Al-Qaeda, ISIS banners, as merely propaganda gimmicks in the initial months of PDP-BJP Government in the state. He advised media not to give such displays prominence as that will only help in the ‘mainstreaming of separatism’. In his recent visit to the state he once again adopted the same approach. For him the explosive situation in Kashmir was some sort of a ‘challenge’ only in South Kashmir. For him rest of Kashmir was being depicted less normal than it actually is. As the Major Gogoi issue exploded into the public domain he was forced to describe the situation in Kashmir as a situation of a ‘war zone’.
Denial of reality in Jammu and Kashmir is not the only attribute of the thinking of the leadership at the helms. Cosmetic bravado also afflicts it. Dr Jitendra Singh’s declaration that we are perhaps only days away from a final victory against terrorism in the state brings out this state of affairs. The ‘fidayeen attack’ on District Police Lines, Pulwama, on August 26, 2017, left 8 security forces dead followed by the killing of Assistant Sub-Inspector in Anantnag only shows how the leadership at the helms is far removed from reality.
Beyond the Statistical Reality
The approach of the Government of India to the Jihadi war in Jammu and Kashmir is ‘statistical’. This approach has been abandoned by experts on terrorism long back particularly after the 9/11 terror strikes in USA. Government of India at present quotes comparative statistics of the terrorist violence in Jammu and Kashmir to prove that it is doing better than the past regimes. It highlights that security forces have killed more terrorists recently as compared to a particular reference time frame in the past.
Main opponents of ruling party harness the same statistical data to prove that their rule was better and the present dispensation has allowed the situation to deteriorate. They claim violence had reached a low ebb in the state during their time in power and number of active terrorists in the state had been brought down to just two digits. They eschew the fact that India Ragdo rebellion as well as radicalization got impetus during their time; and that the decrease in violence happened in a political environment of compromise with Pakistan and the separatists in the state.
The Middle East expert Walid Phares says about the evaluation of Jihadi terror that ” true story goes beyond statistics.” Within no time after GOI had claimed that an early decisive victory against militancy in the state is round the corner, the terrorist regimes in Kashmir circulated a video showing terrorists playing cricket in full battle fatigues using guns as wickets inside an orchard somewhere inside Kashmir valley. The video seeks to show that Gun is now the way of life. Gun battles and youth plays go hand in hand in Kashmir. Another video circulated little earlier in the valley shows nursery kids being trained to handle pistols in the drawing room of a house. It was a shocking display of how gun culture is permeating into the family life. Children playing Mujahid-Soldier duels, singing Jihad rhymes or using pictures of hand-grenades or Ak-47 guns as screen savers on the smart phones tells us that the Islamist terrorism is entering into the folk domain. Statistics fail to tell this story.
A thoughtful look at the statistics of terrorist violence in Kashmir reveals a different story than the government would like us to believe. 133 terrorists have been killed in the state so far in this year. Last year 150 terrorists were killed. Terrorists killed in 2015 were 108 and 110 in 2014. The figures of active terrorists given by the MAC for this year in Kashmir province is 135. Number of active terrorists for each year during this period has been more than the terrorists killed. It reveals the grim reality that there is constant replenishment of the terrorist carders. That terrorist regimes during last two years have regularly undertaken high risk operations against military targets confirms the same reality. They do not have any cadre dearth. Terrorist producing factories are functioning efficiently.
Former Director General, Jammu and Kashmir Police, M M Khajooria has been for quite some time warning the Government about the fast expanding influence of the Salafis operating in the state under the banner of Ahl-e-Hadith. He says, ” flush with unlimited funds flowing from different sources , foreign as well as national and local through all kinds of channels and backed by gun totting Mujahids, Ahl-e-Hadit have taken steady, strong and speedy strides.”
Not long ago the General Secretary of Jamait Ahl-e-hadit, Abdul Rehman Bhat boasted that the organization “has been growing by leaps and bounds since its establishment…. A decade back we had 150 religious institutions and thirty schools. The total number of membership of the organization was 2000-3000. Today we manage 700 religious institutions and 150 schools and membership has gone to 1, 50000.” Ahl-e-Hadith is the mother organization of LeT which is spearheading the terrorist Jihad in Jammu and Kashmir. The growth and proliferation of the infrastructure of Jammt-i-Islami or Allah Walles will be no less mind boggling.
Statistics also do not tell us least about motivations and capabilities of the terrorist regimes. They tell us nothing about the factories that produce terrorists.
The Fatal Paradox
The Government of India wants to project a tough anti-terrorist-separatist image about itself to the people in rest of India. In the state of Jammu and Kashmir it wants the majority community to realize that the ruling party in the Centre is more accommodative to the separatist sensitivities than Congress. It wants to look firm, uncompromising and proactive and soft, permissive and paralytic at the same time.
Government of India continues to nourish a fatal policy paradox. There are two contradictory processes in the same policy framework. One, tightening of the noose round the terror establishment like NIA raids to unearth the terror funds depict. And another, keeping the government in the state which disapproves of such efforts, alive. Plugging the hole in the ship and digging a bigger hole. Assertion and abdication. Kashmir is normal and Kashmir is a war zone. Full blown schizophrenia.
feedbackexcelsior@gmail.com
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel