Action against separatists still in its infancy

After three years of patience and hope that Pakistan would finally see reason, the Narendra Modi government seems to be swerving towards a more hard-line approach both in Kashmir and in Indo-Pak relations.

The hardening process has been on for some time but now it is reaching its logical end with a well-calibrated response to combating terror from across the border and insurgency within.

Internally, it was not as though it needed an expose by a news channel to determine what the Hurriyat and other separatists were up to. The Indian intelligence outfits were well aware that Pakistan was pumping in money through hawala channels to keep the separatists dancing to their tunes.

The exposes on TV gave the Centre a pretext to act which, realistically speaking, it did not need, given the grave provocations that had piled up. In the meantime, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti was told on her last Delhi visit that her appeasement of the separatists had gone too far and that she needed to fall in line with tough measures.

Having already lost out to the National Conference in terms of a pro-separatist tilt, Mehbooba is now clutching at the last straws to keep herself afloat. She no longer invokes Modi but harks back to the Vajpayee era when the then prime minister smoked the peace pipe with Pakistan.

Mehbooba knows that the Centre would not relent to revert to a ‘soft’ stance. With just two years to go for the crucial general elections, the lack of a policy in Kashmir is being seen widely as the Modi government’s biggest failure. She knows that the break with the BJP would come sooner than later leading to a spell of Governor’s rule. She is still weighing her narrowed-down options carefully.

Left to herself, Mehbooba would not have acquiesced in the arrest of firebrand separatist Asiya Andrabi but she had to give in. On the intended choking of sources of funding for Hurriyat leaders she knows only too well that her attempts would be brushed aside. Soon after she forged a coalition with the BJP, she made a pitch for normalization of Indo-Pak relations. But now, seeing how hostility has increased rather than decreased and Pakistan-supported terror has intensified in the valley, she sees discretion as the better part of valour.

The most damning confession of Hurriyat’s complicity with Pakistan came when a TV channel recorded the conversations of Hurriyat activist Nayeem Khan in which he boasted how Pakistani money was funding stone pelters and was being used to burn down schools in Kashmir with future plans of burning down police stations.

Knowing that it stood cornered, Hurriyat suspended Nayeem Khan in a bid to seemingly wash its hands off him. But it was too late. The tactless Khan had exposed himself and made the Hurriyat look vulnerable. He was on camera at his indiscreet best and had no defence.

With the wards of many front-ranking Hurriyat leaders studying in the best of institutions in other countries and being bankrolled by the Centre, it is now the Modi government’s turn to put the separatists in a spot.

The Kashmir separatists are lying low for now, waiting for an opportunity to hit back. But if the Indian government plays its cards well and does not loosen its grip, it could continue to hold the aces as its tough approach brings results.

By opening the doors of police recruitment to locals with serpentine queues building up and a belated but sincere resolve to implement the Modi government’s package for Kashmir which has been in cold storage, there is a carrot and stick approach that cannot be faulted.

The action against the separatists is still in its infancy. A more robust attitude is needed but for a beginning this is the right direction and the right motivation. The fact that dumping the PDP is being seen as an option is as it should be.

There cannot be any compromise on basics—no state government can be allowed to look the other way when seditious statements are being made routinely, foreign money is coming in to finance anti-national activities and enemy flags are being unfurled with impunity.

As for relations with Pakistan, it is the army that calls the shots there which has a stake in keeping the pot boiling. The Pakistan army understands only the language of brute force and the Modi government realized that there is little point in opening peace talks with the civilian administration in such a climate.

The razing of border posts across the border earlier this week was a befitting response to infiltration by terrorists and saboteurs. That this would be a natural process from now on is being hinted at. Earlier, the surgical strikes which made a big impact dealt a strong blow to training camps of terrorists and to the Pakistani psychology of nonchalance. The Indian victory in the International Court of Justice in at least temporarily holding up the execution of Kulbhushan Jadhav who the Pakistanis claim without a shred of evidence is a spy and a terrorist has dealt a blow to the Pakistanis. Diplomatically, India is on a strong wicket internationally.

If there is a trump card the Pakistanis have it is the collusion with China and the building of a road linking China with Pakistan which will not only facilitate trade but also establish Chinese hegemony right at India’s doorstep. That is a major setback for India which this country must seek to neutralize through deft diplomacy involving the US, Japan, Australia, among others.

It is also time India thinks hard on shedding its shyness on supporting insurgency movements in Pakistan, be they in Baluchistan or in Sindh as a reprisal for Islamabad’s open support to the Kashmiri separatists.