Uneasy Fear And A Phalanx Of Barrels

It’s a truth sad and discomfiting in equal measure—attacks by militants in Kashmir rarely go beyond fleeting headlines unless the casualty count is high. Recurring as they have been over the years, the mayhem these attacks wreak serve to buttress the status quo—that of a blasé acceptance of chaos as a way of life in the Valley. And so, if a new wave of fear and loathing has gripped this lost paradise since a gunman walked into an eatery in a high security zone of Srinagar and shot at its 22-year-old co-owner, is there reason to suspect that the status quo has been breached…for the worse?

Around 7.30 pm on February 17, three men on bikes stopped outside Krishna Dhaba, a vegetarian joint frequented by tourists, Hindu pilgrims and locals. One of the men walked into the eatery and shot at Akash Mehra—the dhaba owner’s son. “I was terrified,” says Mehra’s uncle, Subash Chandar, who was at the eatery when the shooting happened. “The gunman shot at Akash and ran off. We all hid behind tables,” Chandar says, adding that he has no clue about why Mehra or the dhaba were targeted.

Krishna Dhaba, closed since the shooting, is near the local police station, residences of the Chief Justice of Jammu & Kash­mir and the Srinagar deputy commissioner, the heavily-guarded office of the United Nations Military Observers in India and Pakistan, headquarters of the Indian Army’s 15 Corps and the Valley’s political nerve centre, Gupkar Road, where three former chief ministers of the erstwhile J&K state live. The attack also coincided with the visit of 23 European Union envoys to Srinagar; the delegation was staying at the Hotel Grand Lalit, situated within 3 km of the eatery.

However, it isn’t the prime location of the militants’ ‘target’ that stands out but what the attack possibly portends for the leitmotif of violence in Kashmir that should concern the state and its sec­urity agencies, say sources. Officially, Inspector General (Kashmir region) Vijay Kumar asserts that the motive of the Krishna Dhaba attack was to “scare away tourists”. If there are few takers for Kumar’s line, it’s bec­ause of an emerging pattern that last week’s attack seems to follow and the past, albeit brief, record of the outfit—The Resistance Front (TRF)—that has owned up the shooting.

TRF had first made headlines on March 23, 2020 when the J&K police claimed to have busted the first ever module of this new outfit. The police had recovered from the group a consignment of weapons that had arrived from Keran sector of Kupwara district. The outfit was dubbed by security agencies as a local proxy for the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba, “launched immediately after the abrogation of Article 370” on August 5, 2019.

The timing of TRF’s sudden rise to prominence, its subsequent statements and attacks for which it has ost­ensibly taken responsibility are instructive. Sources say they explain why the Krishna Dhaba strike is different from earlier militant attacks. A week into the Covid-induced nationwide lockdown, on March 31, 2020, eight months after Article 370 was abrogated and Article 35A of the Indian Constitution was made redundant, the Centre notified a new domicile law for the newly carved Union Territory of J&K. The new law allowed non-Kashmiris residing in the erstwhile state for over 15 years to apply for domicile certificates, while a subsequent change in tenancy laws also enabled them to buy immovable property in Kashmir.

The new domicile and tenancy laws have been widely criticised by Kashmiri politicians and common folk alike as the BJP’s attempt to ‘alter the demographic profile’ of India’s only Muslim-majority territory by allowing Hindu settlers to register as permanent residents. In the months following notification of the new domicile and tenancy laws, TRF issued statements asserting that those applying for Kashmiri residency under the new ordinance would be “treated as occupiers”. TRF also declared that “any Indian who intends to settle in Kashmir will be treated as an agent of the RSS (the BJP’s ideological parent) and not as a civilian and will be dealt with appropriately”.

On December 31, 2020, TRF claimed responsibility for killing 65-year-old Satpal Nischal, a Punjabi who owned a jewellery shop in Srinagar’s Sarai Bal market. Nischal had reportedly acquired a domicile certificate under the new law. In a statement following Nischal’s killing, TRF claimed that the jeweller was “an active participant in the demographic change and settler colony project run by Hindutva fascists to alter the demography of Kashmir.”

Though Kumar concedes that the three men arrested for the attack on Krishna Dhaba were from TRF, he maintains that the shootout was “not linked” to the new domicile laws. Police sources, however, maintain that the shootout at Krishna Dhaba and TRF’s recent record indicates that “this summer is not going to be easy”.

The Centre has been claiming an overwhelming response to the new domicile and tenancy laws—as of September 2020, it claimed receiving over 21 lakh domicile applications and awarding 16.79 lakh new domicile certificates. With outfits like TRF threatening a bloodbath against those with new domicile certificates, the J&K police is, evidently, gearing up for tougher times ahead. Kumar tells Outlook that the police will “keep a close watch on elements who may try to disturb the peace…frisking (of common citizens) will also be intensified”. At a recent meeting of high-level officials, including those from the J&K police, it was decided to rei­nstate a surveillance regime last seen in the early 1990s, when militants in the Valley numbered in thousands. As such, round-the-clock checkpoints, surprise posts, cordon and search operations in crowded places and placing cut-off points on exit routes will be enforced. Since the Krishna Dhaba attack, the police, say sources, have also decided to introduce another category of people who it will monitor closely—the “vulnerable persons”, an euphemism for new settlers.

The targeted killing of Kashmiri Pandits in the 1990s and the community’s exodus from the Valley has been a long, festering wound for people of the erstwhile state—a painful bond that Kashmiri Muslims share with those who were displaced from their home and hearth nearly three decades ago due to militancy. Curiously, while the Centre’s avowal of resettling Pandits in the land of their ancestors remains largely on paper, its programme of handing out domicile certificates by the lakhs in Kashmir threatens to prove costly for their intended beneficiaries—the non-Kashmiri Hindus.

By Naseer Ganai in Srinagar