The Bharatiya Janata Party’s proposed Tiranga Yatra in Srinagar’s Lal Chowk on Republic Day and the reactions it has provoked underscore the dangerous drift in the valley. Make no mistake. The seeming quiet over the past few weeks is a mere seasonal lull between the storms. The Himalayan snow packs a more persuasive punch than the most determined of peace-keeping forces. It also manages to camouflage the least effective of governments. But there are far too many signs in the icy winds to suggest that hope is not likely to blossom when seasons change and the white spread gives way to the myriad colours of hill flowers.
The principal opposition party in Parliament plans to hoist the national flag at Lal Chowk on January 26. Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has been persuading the BJP to reconsider its plan. Why Kashmir, why not anywhere else in the country, he has asked, much to the delight of the BJP, quite forgetting of course that the last time this party did such a thing it brought little credit to the then president Murli Manohar Joshi.
If the Abdullah-led state government is squirming at the political embarrassment, the centre seems to be doing even worse. Radha Kumar, one of the three interlocutors appointed by the central government, has opposed the BJP’s plan and supported the separatist leader Yasin Malik who has threatened to “see” whoever unfurls the tricolour at Lal Chowk. Radha Kumar has argued that the BJP should be opposed on two grounds: one, that the national flag has traditionally been unfurled at Bakshi Stadium and not at Lal Chowk, and two, because Lal Chowk happens to be an area where Yasin Malik has support, which, she said, is understandable because Malik lost a cousin who was presumably killed by security forces.
These are not mere arguments proffered in the course of television debates. These statements have come at a time when the centre has actually announced that it is considering scaling back the forces deployed in the valley by as much as a quarter. The move will do little to boost the security of the ordinary citizen even as it will surely endanger the depleted force.
The rationale and the recourse adopted by those who are supposed to govern smack of a curious case of Stockholm syndrome. It is curious because in the traditional Stockholm syndrome victims turn sympathetic to their kidnappers over time. In the case of Kashmir, policy-makers have not even been physically kidnapped and yet they seem to have turned mentally hostage to the viewpoint of the separatists. This has led to policy perversion because any sane government would give everything to the Kashmiris and nothing to the separatists, not the vice versa as has been happening. The long term solution, too, lies in raising the opportunity cost for the ordinary Kashmiris who join the separatists. If those in the state and in the central government cannot even make out one group from the other, they have no business to be in office.
