Three days into the appointment of the former Intelligence Bureau chief Dineshwar Sharma, centre is sending out conflicting signals on Kashmir. On the one hand, Sharma is talking about reaching out to all sections of society and also try and get separatists on board and on the other a message is going out that there will be no let up in the hardline security centric policy towards the state. Army chief General Bipin Rawat has said that the new political initiative will not detract from the tough nature of the ongoing counter-insurgency operations. Similarly there has been no change in the National Investigation Agency’s actions against separatists. A development that has raised questions about the seriousness of the centres political outreach to Kashmir, the NIA arrested Syed Shahid Yusuf, the son of Hizbul Mujahideen supremo Syed Salahuddin, in terror funding case a day after the government announced the appointment of Sharma. According to NIA Yusuf has been receiving and collecting funds through international wire money transfer” from Saudi Arabia. Ever since not only has Yusuf been remanded into seven days’ custody but NIA has also carried out raids against Salahuddin’s other son.
So far, NIA has arrested one top and seven middle-rung separatist leaders. Recently a court in New Delhi extended their judicial custody till November 14.
Similarly, political noises emanating from New Delhi dont give any cause for confidence. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said that the centre was talking from a position of strength and that Hurriyat had been “exposed” by New Delhi’s tough approach towards the state. Jaitley also indicated that in the event of separatists not talking the government would “talk to students, traders, traders associations, any political leader and Kashmiri people”.
This has created a paradoxical situation: Centre wants to talk to Hurriyat but at the same time continues to arrest its leaders. People in Kashmir tend to look at the arrests as a ploy to pressure Hurriyat to talk and then release the leaders as a goodwill gesture.
As of now nothing can be said with certainty about centre’s seriousness to the dialogue. What is clear, however, is that centre is simultaneously working on three tracks with regard to Kashmir: One, tough counter-insurgency measures against militants, second, a concerted investigation into the alleged terror funding cases against separatists and third the political outreach through the appointment of a new interlocutor. If anything, this kind of approach hardly looks conducive to the dialogue geared to resolve anything in the state. There is thus a need to bring some unanimity in the approach of the different agencies of the country towards J&K. A meaningful dialogue would require all institutions to work in ways that furthers and facilitates it. Much like terror and talks don’t go together, state’s coercive measures and the dialogue too don’t gel.
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