Braid cutting is not public hysteria

All of us have heard many stories where a devious character deliberately spooks another character to drive him crazy in order to vindicate his version of an event or derive some undeserved personal benefit out of it. This strategy succeeds as it is the consequent weird behaviour of the spooked character which grabs all the attention, not the root cause of the spooking. The storyline has now become an abiding archetype, having also been replicated umpteenth time in Bollywood movies. Kashmir today is in the midst of one such archetype: When J&K Police seeks to convey that the ongoing chaos in Valley over the braid cutting is but an instance of the mass hysteria, it is as if the real life were imitating the art. In a statement, police threatened “a strict legal action” against miscreants breaking law “in the name of so called braid chopping”.    The statement further requested people “not to fall prey to rumours” and reiterated that “strict legal action will be taken against attention seekers”.  In a sense, the statement seems to entirely deny the existence of the braid cutting in Kashmir. As if no women had so far had his braid been cut.  As if the people have collectively dreamed up the incidents which have taken place so far. As if the pictures, videos of the women with their braids having been cut had been imagined and mistaken  for real.

This is such a sorry state of affairs. Far from cracking the case, the police is out to blame the people suffering a not so mysterious and a coordinated assault. If anything, it only serves to divert  the attention from the main issue. And which is the truth about the braid cutting in Kashmir. Who are the people who are doing it? Why are they doing it? And why have they not been identified so far? There are no answers to these questions. So many incidents of the braid cutting have taken place. Not one has been cracked. in some cases, people have blamed the security agencies of rescuing the alleged perpetrators. People also widely suspect the hand of the security agencies behind the phenomenon. And the inability to explain the growing frequency of the incidents or apprehend a single culprit have naturally deepened these suspicions.

The people see the incidents as harking back to the ‘bhoot’ phenomenon of the mid-nineties which had similarly remained unexplained. For weeks, the so called ghosts created havoc across the Valley. Everyday as the dusk fell, these ghosts seemed to take over the Valley’s streets. In incident after incident, the alleged ghosts broke into the houses or injured the passersby. By and by, the fear triggered a hysterical reaction, much like it has done now.  With braid snippings, the Valley is experiencing a similar scene yet again.  Only way the government can acquit itself is by not only apprehending the perpetrators but also identifying them.  But after two weeks into the incidents, the government remains as clueless as in the nineties. And there is little hope that culprits will ever be brought to book. Least that the government  can be expected to do is not to the blame the people for their panicky reaction to a very bizarre situation. 

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