The fallout of the Uri terror attack is still playing itself out. On Tuesday, Army said it killed ten infiltrating militants in Uri and also accused Pakistan of violating the ceasefire along the Line of Control, which latter denied. The situation still remains very fluid. A large section of the national media, particularly news channels have gone ballistic and are baying for blood. It is chilling to hear them openly call for war. But despite indulging in a bellicose rhetoric, New Delhi has stayed short of a knee-jerk reaction.
While this is welcome, as a war between India and Pakistan has apocalyptic dimensions, the narrative that is being peddled by the government and the parts of national media is troubling in its aspects. For it is out and out a nationalistic discourse which doesn’t take on board the other and equally justifiable narratives of the existing state of affairs. For example, the ongoing situation in Kashmir where around 90 people have been killed, several hundred blinded and over 12000 injured. And this situation has a context, history and a narrative too. True, the narratives are always more a function of power than the truth. But that hardly detracts from the fact that the other discourses exist and have a case of their own – albeit undone by their weakness.
As it is, the world is a deeply unfair place when it comes to responding to the narratives of the weak. A powerful country can bring its weight to bear on the principles of justice. It can play up its own sense of grievance and outrage, its self-serving interpretation of the events to the detriment of the those of the weaker parties, even in many ways obscuring and stamping out the later. And it is this reality of the world as it is, that is in play these days. The outrage that has been on display on television justifiably springs from a tragic incident at Uri which left 18 soldiers dead but it is difficult for a Kashmiri not to feel deeply upset about its selective nature.
That said, Kashmiris hardly have a reason to nurse grievance against New Delhi on this score. Not because it is not right but because they should hardly expect New Delhi or a large part of the national media to be responsive to it. And they do have their own reasons for not doing it. The states, as it is, don’t operate on moral principles but on cold logic of self-survival and self-interest. Our bane in Kashmir has been that we have tended to look at the world as a morality play where our sacrifices are expected to win our cause the attention and sympathy. And as we and our leaders should have learnt so far, that is not the case. But unfortunately we haven’t learnt from the experience. Our struggle so far has shown a horrifying and an inexcusable absence of a learning curve. It is overridingly based on emotion, sacrifices and a near total want of thinking and strategy. Sooner or later, we have to wake up to this reality and confront the brutal objective truths of our situation. It is time that those at the helm of this movement are also held to account and told in no uncertain terms that the scale of the support and sacrifices they get from the people deserves a far smarter leadership that they currently seem to be capable of providing.
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