The coalition partners PDP and BJP are seemingly at war over the FIR against the Army for killing three youth at Shopian. The BJP wants the FIR to be withdrawn but the Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti wants it to be taken to its logical conclusion. The situation has come to a point where the senior BJP leader Subramanium Swami has called for dismissal of the state government if the FIR was not withdrawn. The BJP legislator Ravinder Raina has justified the killings of the youth, saying the protesters were backed by Pakistan. Influential central minister Dr Jitendra Singh thinks that the FIR can demoralize the Army. What is of nobody’s concern in the BJP, even for that matter in the rest of the country, is that three teenagers were killed in eminently avoidable circumstances. The issue at stake is thus the case registered against the Army personnel who fired at the crowd and killed three youth. But the BJP has ensured it becomes an issue about the case against Army rather than the killings of the youth.
This is a classic example of how the narratives can be manufactured to suit the ruling ideology of the day. And that how the truth of a particular event or a situation largely doesn’t matter should it not suit the state’s discourse. Also, that a dominant narrative is generally a function of power than the truth.
And the truth is that the FIR against Army means nothing. Over the past three decades, hundreds of cases involving human rights excesses are pending against the Army but none of them has been acted upon. Nor is there any such possibility in future. Army in Kashmir is protected by the AFSPA and so any action against the Army personnel involved in alleged human rights violations has to be sanctioned by the defense ministry. But so far not a single such case has been sanctioned, some of them as heinous as Pathribal killings in which five civilians were killed by the army and passed off as the terrorists responsible for the killing of 36 Sikhs at Chittisinghpora. CBI which later investigated the case concluded that the encounter was fake and persons killed were innocent civilians.
So as long as AFSPA is there, Army has thus nothing to fear. The FIRs will come and go. They are merely instruments in the hands of the governments to address the momentary public anger. But as the BJP has made it clear even this symbolic move wouldn’t be tolerated. It is so big an issue for the party that Swamy sees it as a prelude to a Unilateral Declaration of Independence by the PDP. This is such a preposterous claim but the tragedy is that far from reflecting a fringe sentiment, such statements articulate the mainstream political opinion.
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