Mass anger and the cycle of violence that has accompanied it refuses to die down in Kashmir. The locus of this anger is the state and much of the ire is directed against Mehbooba Mufti. This is in sharp contrast to the past wherein Mehbooba would console and participate in the funerals of militants killed by the state in counter-insurgency ops. Mehbooba’s apparent (some would say feigned) sympathy came to be recognized as a crucial prong of “soft separatism”- the appropriation of the separatist space in Kashmir by a mainstream party. The space that soft separatism managed to eke out for itself emanated from the process of attrition and the psychical need on part of Kashmiris to seek some kind of honourable settlement over the conflict in and over Kashmir. While some would quibble and argue that the space for soft separatism was , in reality, created by the state to usurp the separatist space and that the PDP was used as front or face for “ mainstreaming” separatism and that it was not organic, the fact remains that many people in Kashmir “fell” for it. The PDP came to be recognized as an alternate front or even force that contended and jostled with separatism.
In this sense and given Kashmiris’ psychical need for some sort of closure in term of the conflict in and over Kashmir, PDP was a bit of a success and it indeed had a future. However, as is well known and recognized now, by first seeking votes against the encroachment of the far right party , the BJP , on Kashmir, the PDP allied with the very same forces and gave them a foothold in Kashmir. This not only meant giving the Centre more space in Kashmir but also ceding space to a political force whose Idea of India is in sharp contrast to the conventionally accepted one. Historically, cozying upto the Centre has never worked in Kashmir. This, however, was not the “original sin”; the intensity of the sin lay in allying with the BJP. This along with the actual and real sentiment and narrative obtaining in Kashmir- historically and contemporarily- was a combustible equation. The result was Kashmir’s descent into anger and violence.
Here we may make a digression of a generic sort. It is held by psychologists that anger results from positive and negative feedback loops that allow for increasing and decreasing neurochemical activity (cf. LeDoux, 2002), accounting for the temporal course of anger. (639). Or in other words, the expression of anger and aggression is be influenced by feedback loops. What, the question, is the relation of this assessment with Kashmir?
A strong one is the answer.
The modern (or even medieval) political history of Kashmir is a history of deceptions, betrayals, intrigues and treachery. Hardly any historic episode with significant repercussions and consequences has been bereft of these foibles and deceit. This, in our view, has led to a psycho-political condition which can be called a volatile and unstable Kashmiri psyche which, however, is trusting and gullible as well. Repeatedly, Kashmiris to get out of the historical political morass have reposed their trust in leaders and people purporting to lead them out it but tragically, the people of Kashmir have always been betrayed. The feedback loops generated by repeated betrayals have made Kashmir and Kashmiris prone to express their anger in an idiom of violence- first the insurgency of the 1990’s and now collective mass anger and attendant violence on the streets. In this sense, Mehbooba Mufti’s backtracking from soft separatism and then allying with the BJP constitutes another stab in the back for Kashmiris and corresponds to a pattern. Fuel to the fire is added by Mehbooba’s inept and ham handed response to deal with the current crisis.
The ongoing protests in Kashmir, catalyzed by the killing of militant commander, Burhan Wani were initially premised on diffuse anger which then morphed into anger against the Indian state and Mehbooba Mufti. The protestors have a face to hate and vent their anger onto. The anger , then essentially is a neuralgic reaction to a series of betrayals of which Mehbooba’s allying with the BJP was the latest manifestation. It is latest betrayal in a series if betrayals that explain the mass protests that have engulfed Kashmir.
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