In the book they recently released, “The Meadow”, British authors Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark, aptly
elucidates the first scenes of Kashmir during 90’s as being amidst of a “full
scale Indian military operation: chaotic jumble of sandbags, concrete barriers
and barbed wire, the roads jammed with armoured vehicles of all descriptions,
around which the Indian soldiers milled.” The protagonists in his book apparently
stood agape when they saw vast convoys of Army trucks honking and drumming
aside everyone who comes in their way – they had arrived in what was
quintessentially a ‘war zone’.
For years people living in this part of the world have been
smitten by the brunt of the deadly war fought between India’s repressive
military force and Islamist militants who agitate for a separate statehood. The barbarity of the conflict has rendered
thousands dead, wounded, bruised, maimed, homeless and traumatized. The figures about dead people floating in the
collective beliefs oscillate between 40,000 to 100,000 – with different people
trotting out a different number depending upon their political leanings.
But today, the Valley of Kashmir stands out completely in a
different state, gracefully defying this bleak description it epitomized in all
these two decades of bloodletting. It can be witnessed limping into an
inexplicable bout of tranquility which Indian commentators describe as
‘normalcy’ and critics as ‘desolation’; its people scraping out a living with
little care to grenade attacks, shoot-outs
and crack downs that once were as rife as the dawn and dusk.
A slew of steps by the Indian state, ranging from boosting an
urban sprawl in the summer capital Srinagar to rolling back of sand-bag
military bunkers, has tried to ensure that the region is yanked from the gloom
of mutiny and bloodshed. But sentiment
of seceding from India hasn’t waned. Kashmiri’s still notoriously object to the
perfunctory referral of J&K as a ‘part of India’. They argue why the cops involved in 2010
murderous street rage haven’t been brought to justice.
Meanwhile, a bewildering passion of state’s voters to defy
secessionists’ poll boycott calls, who otherwise are revered leaders, hasn’t too
ebbed. Just last year thousands of
people queued up in long endless columns to vote in the regional hamlet polls
or Panchayat elections, braving warnings and the searing summer heat.
Srinagar is not the same as it was some years back. The multitude of Indian soldiers, donning olive green fatigues and outdated helmets, no more stroll around the historic city center of Lal Chowk. A sudden vacation of the Palladium cinema by India’s central reserve forces near the area after a gap of 15 years was widely welcomed. Presence of Bunkers, temporary structures made up of the heaps of sand-bags that security forces once used as bulwarks, has considerably lessened in and around many parts of the region. The sprawling roads that pass through the city looks spruced up. Srinagar also has traffic lights now whose work was outsourced to South African engineers. Tourist hordes flocking into the valley are also unprecedented with hotel occupancy shooting up to the level of ‘no vacancy’
But even all this hasn’t helped the state govt, just like any
other govt in the world, to fend off a public ire. Authorities in J&K have
been in the eye of a storm for quite some time over two conspicuous problems: A
ghastly menace of serial dog-biting incidents and an infant death scare at a
local hospital, GB Pant, located at the Srinagar outskirts. But these issues do not relate to conflict,
therefore has little to do in undermining this spell of peace the region is
basking.
But all these cannot been taken as anecdotes that the conflict is
dying. There are still people who organize sit-in protests at the exquisite
Pratap Park at the center of Srinagar, holding tight with their chests, the pictures
of their relatives allegedly disappeared after being picked up by police and
Indian soldiers. Still a fervent appeal
of strike by Syed Ali Shah Geelani, a secessionist demagogue, has a big chunk
of takers. Young boys wearing bandanas
still chuck stones occasionally at the cops risking the law and order seriously,
as police alleges. Still the state police
driven by their gnawing feel of anxiety about the unknown, ends up arresting
and locking down dozens over even the most benign protests. The condemned laws
like AFSPA are still in place.
Kashmir’s current political landscape is being mottled by the
schisms emerging within the separatist headships. Kashmir interlocutors, an
Indian-appointed conversationist trio that were to schmooze talks between Kashmir’s
and the Indian leadership, too have become the subjects of denigration in the
state.
Al though there are no serious evidences to assume that this
period, characterized by dwindling violence and increasing normalcy, is
perpetual but none of political infighting, feisty internet commentary, frantic
secessionist demonstrations and an Indian-style interlocution has thus far been
able to bog it down.
