A Hijack On The Highway

The threat by four previously unknown militant groups in Kashmir to bomb the first bus from Srinagar to Muzaffarabad has not come as a surprise. Ever since Vajpayee first mooted the idea two years ago, a small section of the Kashmiri separatist movement, spearheaded by Syed Ali Shah Geelani, has done all it could to prevent the two countries from reaching an agreement on the issue. Geelani has warned Pakistan time and again that opening the road between the two Kashmirs will release the pressure behind the demand for secession from India in the Kashmir Valley. He has criticised Musharraf bitterly for playing into India's hands and accused him of selling the Kashmiris out.

Geelani's has, however, been a lone voice. The vast majority of the people in the Valley have welcomed the decision to open the road with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Srinagar celebrated when the starting date for the bus service was announced and thousands of Kashmiris on both sides of the Line of Control have asked for permits to visit the other part of Kashmir. The overwhelming sentiment in favour of the road link is reflected in the unanimity that has emerged across virtually the entire spectrum of political opinion—from mainstream political parties to the Hurriyat leaders (excluding Geelani) and key Kashmiri nationalists like Yasin Malik and Shabbir Shah. All have welcomed this step because they regard it as the first in relinking the two parts of Kashmir and restoring the identity that it lost when it was forcibly partitioned by war in 1949.

New Delhi has responded to the threat in the only way possible—by increasing security for the bus. But it would be idle to pretend that the extremists have not achieved a good part of their objective. For Kashmiris, there will be a world of difference between making the trip in a mood of jubilation and one of apprehension. The threat has therefore snuffed out some of the euphoria that had been generated by this historic breakthrough.

What's more, by forcing the passengers to make the trip under an Indian security blanket, the extremists have, to some extent, managed to brand them as collaborators of the Indian state. The two together will make many Kashmiris who would otherwise have wanted to take advantage of the bus service think twice. If the threat ends by reducing border crossings by Kashmiris to a trickle, the extremists will have achieved their purpose. The escape valve for Kashmiri nationalism will be constricted and the level of alienation in the Valley will not come down by very much.

New Delhi should have foreseen the threat because there was ample warning that extremists were gearing up to make a last-ditch effort to sabotage the peace process. In recent weeks the number of targeted killings of Kashmiri political leaders had gone up. This had prompted a decision by the Unified Command (of security forces) to step up the pressure on the remaining extremists in Kashmir and in particular upon 'above ground' militants who were helping the terrorists.

If newspaper reports are to be believed, Indian intelligence had obtained evidence that the extremists were being encouraged, if not directed, by sections of the isi which had been given a green light by Pakistan's corps commanders. But even without such instigation there are a sufficient number of deeply alienated and otherwise unemployable youth in Kashmir to provide recruits for the religious-extremism-inspired terrorism that is engulfing the Valley.

New Delhi should therefore have kept as low a profile as possible and let April 7 be a Kashmiri celebration of a Kashmiri victory. This might not have prevented the extremists from issuing their threat but it would have made it clear to the average Kashmiri who his real enemies are.Instead Delhi has turned the flagging off of the bus into an Indian tamasha. Not only Sonia Gandhi but the prime minister himself will be in Srinagar and so will be every politician and media person of note in the Indian State. Security will be fierce, and ordinary peoples' lives will be disrupted. The massive presence of Indian troops and paramilitary forces on the roads will remind many Kashmiris that nothing really has changed. Sonia and Manmohan Singh will monopolise the media limelight and push Omar Abdullah and Mufti Sayeed into the shade. By the time the tamasha is over and the Indian leaders have departed, the Hurriyat will be wondering whether they did not make a mistake by welcoming the bus service.

There is an imperial insensitivity behind the hijacking of the Srinagar ceremony that is not very different from what the US displays regularly all over the world. Its chief characteristic is an inability to see an event from any but its own point of view. When 56 per cent of the Iraqi electorate voted in the January 31 elections braving a rising tide of insurgent violence and more than 40 deaths during the polling, the US failed to see that the high turnout was part of the Iraqis' desperate attempt to hasten the departure of foreign troops from their homeland. Instead it claimed the elections as a victory for democracy and a vindication of its invasion of Iraq. In the same way, when Kashmiris fight for 15 years to gain their place in the sun, New Delhi turns their success into its success.

Fortunately, it's not too late to prevent this. All that Sonia and Manmohan need to do is go to Kashmir as guests to share in their joy. Let Mufti, Omar Abdullah, and other Kashmiris make the speeches and flag off the bus. Let it be their day and let us not turn it into ours.