KASHMIR: A Policy Paralysis!

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

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For years and decades, everybody in New Delhi----from intelligence agencies to political parties----drained the poor Indian taxpayer's exchequer by pumping money, pampering and appeasement of Kashmir's politicians, blah blah blah, only to retain control on the land. In the process, Delhi created "agents" not patriots, not nationalists who could have emerged naturally out of the beauty of a true democratic system and legitimacy of institutions. The agency politics became phenomenal after J&K Assembly passed a unanimous resolution for restoration of greater autonomy in 1999. Rather than the genuine political leadership at the Centre, it were the Army generals and security/intelligence officers like Dulat and Doval who handled the Kashmir affairs in cahoots with the best of Kashmir's sellouts and the lowest bidders of the agency politics. Licenses were granted and deceitful slogans allotted to the agency politicians who gave their own interpretations to every single incident and development and carried out agendas under camouflage. What better can be the proof of the failure and futility of India's Kashmir policy than the comparison between October 2014 and April 2016. In 2014, Kashmir witnessed India's best held elections of post-47 era as millions of voters participated with unprecedented enthusiasm and not a single Indian flag, banner or Rahul Gandhi’s/ Narendra Modi’s hoarding was pulled down or torched anywhere in the Valley for 3 months of electioneering. Within one and a half years, everything has turned topsy turvy. Everybody seems to be burning with anti-India sentiment, yearning for separation and learning to return deceit for deceit. Delhi’s so-called Kashmir experts, who have grown notorious for analysing things subjectively and projecting their own clientèle of agents for the power in J&K, must today explain how an allegation of molestation of a girl, levelled by others not even by the natural complainant, has yet again turned this paradise into hellhole. This will simmer, notwithstanding all the poltical and media engineering. This will spill blood, notwithstanding the mainstream opposition's mute response and promises of cooperation, notwithstanding the separatist opposition's undertaking that they would neither call for "Handwara Chalo" nor issue the shutdown calendar. On an optimistic note, remember there's solution to every conflict on the earth. For now, stop this bloodshed, punish the guilty without any prose and poetry, hold your executive accountable, make your judiciary credible and STOP YOUR AGENCY POLITICS.