Security forces go unsung, uncared

The Prime Minister made himself available for a meeting with the Opposition leaders from Kashmir on Monday on a very short notice. The National Conference leader and former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, who has emerged from hibernation following the latest eruption of protests, led the delegation. Modi talked Kashmir for over an hour and disarmed the interlocutors. He most candidly asserted that it was not merely a law and order problem and that the relevant protagonists in the Valley needed to be engaged. He was ready to talk with whoever was in position to sort out the mess, the only precondition being that the integrity and sovereignty of the country as also of the Constitution were supreme and inviolate. The PM was told how little children and youths were hurt by the pellet guns used by the security forces and that a number of them feared total blindness as a result. But if anyone mentioned the most trying circumstances under which the security forces operate in Kashmir and how they were being subjected to all manner of verbal and physical attacks, including gun and grenade attacks, it was not let out to the media. But the claim that a hundred odd young protesters had had their eyes damaged by the shrapnel from the pellet guns was reiterated many times over by the Opposition leaders. It is not as if the politicians alone are partial to the alleged victims of the on-going jihadi protests. A large section of the media too seems to have, often unwittingly, bought into the wholly lopsided propaganda. If you believe the media, there is only one side which was on the receiving end of the violence in the Valley. There is no attempt to understand, much less to appreciate, the grave provocation and great personal risk under which the security personnel defend the country against the ISI agents and their proxies in Kashmir. If the media cared to nudge its memory, only a couple of years ago the paid and professional agitators in the Valley had taken to pelting stones at the security forces in which hundreds of police and security personnel had damaged their eyes. The extended stone-throwing protests last time persuaded the security forces to use the pellet guns which disgorge tiny but sharp stones and such like objects to disperse the stone- and grenade-throwers. Given that the cowardly leadership of the aazadi brigade hides behind shuttered brick and mortar structures while instigating children and youths to go on the street and pelt stones at the security forces in defiance of the curfew, it is natural for the security forces to try and impose a modicum of order through the use of pellet guns. The use of teargas shells has often proved ineffective with the protesters throwing them back at the security forces. The short point is that the restraint and discipline of the security forces in the face of grave provocations is hardly noted by the political class. Of course, the self-avowedly secular-liberal sections consider it infra dig to correct the public perception that the security forces too are highly vulnerable to bodily harm from the protesters.

Not many people know that security forces stay cooped 24x7 in their barracks when they are not on street defending the country against the ISI agents and other aazadi mongers. Nor would anyone try and inject a sense of reality into the heads of those seeking to break free from India by pointing out that within hours of such a denouement they would be gobbled up by the Pakistani Army, only to be driven out from their traditional homes so that Punjabi Muslims and others such people can occupy their lands. This is what they did in Pakistan- Occupied Kashmir and this is what they will do in Kashmir — and not India- Occupied Kashmir as the great liberal-secularist Digvijay Singh would like us to believe — should the stone-and grenade-throwers get aazadi. Now that Omar Abdullah and Co. have done their bit by meeting the Prime Minister, they should concentrate their energies to create conducive conditions in Kashmir for the resumption of talks with ‘our’ boys. He should take a delegation to the protesters and persuade them to return to the path of sanity so that the dialogue process can begin all over again — even though nothing is likely to come out of it, it will at least temporarily help reduce tensions.