‘Sense of hopelessness’
KASHMIR VIOLENCE HAS LEFT MANY YOUNG PEOPLE FEELING ANGRY AND FRUSTRATED
Made fearless and defiant by anger, they are the new generation of faces that capture the rising frustrations of nearly 30 years of Islamic insurgency in Indian- controlled Kashmir.
In one image from the state capital of Srinagar that went viral across India last month, an affluent teenage girl in school uniform cradles a volleyball under one arm while hurling rocks at the police with the other.
In another extraordinary scene, a group of schoolgirls, schoolbags still snug on their backs, surrounded an Indian army armoured vehicle, kicking the doors and calling upon the bewildered security personnel inside to fire upon them if they dared.
“Is it not better to die challenging the situation once and for all than to live with it and die a slow death every day?” one of the 14- year- olds involved in the assault told The Daily Telegraph.
Such are the simmering frustrations in Kashmir that three years after the Hindu- nationalist Narendra Modi won power in New Delhi, experts now warn that coming summer months will be “crucial” to the future of India’s only Muslim-majority province.
“The situation is worse in terms of atmospherics, because the alienation and anger of young Kashmiris is now out of control,” said Amarjit Dulat, former head of the Research and Analysis Wing, India’s overseas intelligence gathering agency.
“There is a sense of hopelessness with villagers, students and even schoolgirls coming out onto the streets. This has never happened in the past.”
Senior security officials in Srinagar described the situation as “incendiary” and “flashpoint- fragile” after months of unrest this year in the region where 70,000 have died during the 28- year insurgency against Indian rule.
In Srinagar the deceptive calm across its narrow, traffic congested streets and those of smaller surrounding towns, can evaporate instantly with clashes between the security forces and rock- hurling students erupting without notice.
“There is an overwhelming sense of siege in Kashmir and levels of isolation amongst locals have peaked,” a security official in-charge of Kashmir told the Telegraph, declining to be identified.
The civil administration, he warned is non-functional, militants are increasingly being looked upon as saviours by the public and a civil disobedience movement involving a majority of Kashmiris is expanding “exponentially.”
“Kashmiris have lost all hope for peace in their lifetime and are resigned to a lifetime of violence,” said Siddiq Wahid, a Kashmir historian.
Kashmiris blame the upsurge in violence on the reverberations from the hardline Hindu- nationalism of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP), with its anti- Islam rhetoric, and on the frequent attacks by Hindu “cow protection vigilante groups” on Muslim cattle traders across the country.
“The wave of Hindu fanaticism sweeping across India is hardening postures in Kashmir,” said Khurram Parvez, a human rights activist from the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Liberty.
“There are no moderates espousing peace left in Kashmir any more. Mentally, we are all militants.”
Hindus comprise around 80 per cent of India’s population of 1.3 billion, while Muslims are some 15 per cent, totalling around 180 million.
Since the Kashmiri insurgency started in 1989, India has blamed Pakistan — which controls a third of Kashmir — for fuelling the unrest. Islamabad had denied the allegations, claiming it provided the Kashmir freedom struggle only moral, diplomatic and political support.
Following more violence last weekend, tensions are expected only to rise with the re- introduction of random searches by the Indian army after a 15-year lay-off. The searches were ordered after the kidnap and murder of a newly-commissioned Kashmir i army subaltern who had returned home on leave.
Military analysts warned the “sweep operations” by the army could prove counter productive— and might even trigger a return to the furious militancy of the 1990s.
India and Pakistan have also fought two of their three wars over the disputed state and an 11-week military skirmish on Kashmir’s icy slopes in the Kargil region in 1999, in which 1,200 soldiers from both sides died.
“This clampdown could trigger a blowback that will only aggravate anti-India sentiment in Kashmir,” said retired Brigadier Rahul Bhonsle of Strategic Foresight Asia, a New Delhi think-tank.
“It will only exacerbate the challenge of containing Kashmir’s spiralling violence.”