For the past 47 days now Kashmir has been reeling under the back breaking curfew, restrictions and forces’ brutal operations to crush the massive unprecedented revolt in twelve hundred villages of Kashmir. It has been the longest curfew and brutal operation by forces possibly anywhere in the world. So far 68 persons have been mercilessly killed. More than 500 hundred have been deliberately blinded by pellet guns and almost five thousand maimed and crippled by guns for life only for raising their voice of protest against brutal and heavily militarized occupation.
Any other country in the world which professes to be democratic would have listened to the voice of people and set in motion a speedy political process to address the rightful demands of the agitating people. But Indian state has been sending only more forces to suppress the people’s largely peaceful movement and by trying to generate different deceptive narratives to deflect world attention from the peaceful massive movement and to misinform Indian public. Pakistan comes as a handy whipping boy to Government of India to escape from owning responsibility for the sins it has committed in Kashmir.
Everyone knows that it has been a spontaneous massive revolt, venting a cumulative anger that has accumulated over the years over the delay in resolving the Kashmir issue. The anger is against attempts to naturalise a military brutal order, for maintaining a paralysing political stalemate, for trying to change the demographics and cultural landscape of Kashmir in spite of having rendered enormous sacrifices both human and material in the past three decades for exercising the right to self determination.
In mystifying the current revolt and giving it various names other than what it is in reality, PDP has been on the forefront in helping Indian government to wriggle out of the responsibility of resolving the issue and crushing it with brute force. First Mehbooba’s vilification of the movement through obfuscating outpourings calling it hulla gulla and then Beigh taking the vilification to new depths of depravity in a bid to replace her in RSS’s imagination by connecting cataclysmic revolt to the international agenda of Muslim demonization by terming it as ISIS and madrasas’ induced radicalization aiming at establishing Khilafat in Kashmir.
Indian home minister at least deserves credit for refusing to link it with ISIS et al. Ever body knows that those who are spearheading the movement are modern, educated youth especially in science and technology and have felt the military and political oppression very intensely. Instead credit goes to opposition party leaders and parliament leaders who have stressed on the political solution of the crisis and speedy negotiations with resistance leaders for the resolution of the long pending issue. The government of India can still retrieve the situation by taking appropriate steps on the ground as suggested by the former home minister P Chidambaram and seriously initiate meaningful negotiations for the lasting resolution of the issue that has devoured millions of lives and brought untold and indescribable sufferings to Kashmiris. Otherwise it will lead to disaster for which government of India would alone be responsible.
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