SIR, This has reference to RC Jain’s letter ‘Kashmir Story’, (The Statesman, 29 August) commenting on my article ‘Kashmir Cauldron” published in The Statesman on August 17 and 18. He has raised some important issues which could not be discussed at length in the article because of shortage of space. But there were also some more important reasons.
The main thrust of my article was on the changing nature of militancy in Kashmir, since its outbreak in the early 1990s to the present day, and for this I had to discuss the causes behind the same, particularly the mismanagement of affairs by successive governments in Srinagar, and the role played by dispensations in New Delhi in destabilising the political situation for narrow political gains. This is as true of the Congress Party as of the current political dispensation in New Delhi.
Mr Jain has referred to the ‘BJP-PDP alliance’; this was not really an alliance but an opportunity for the BJP to grab power by entering into a coalition with the PDP as the 2014 Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir brought huge gains for the BJP, primarily in Jammu (25 seats) while the PDP flourished in Kashmir (28 seats). Despite the call for a boycott by the Hurriyat Conference, voter turnout in the 2014 Assembly elections, on an average was 65.23 per cent, indicating peoples’ willingness to participate in the democratic process.
But the BJP-PDP coalition failed to deliver, which became particularly evident in the aftermath of the devastating floods of 2014. The anger of the people intensified over the non-fulfilment of promises relating to reconstruction for which people blamed both the central and state governments. There is little doubt that these factors and the iron-fist approach of the government in dealing with the traders’ strike prepared the ground for revival of insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir, and the spark was provided by the killing of Burhan Wani. Pakistan took advantage of these to fish in the troubled waters of Kashmir to further its own interests. So far as the scrapping of Article 370 (and Article 35A) was concerned, I was not ‘shy’ to discuss the issue; I avoided any long discussion on it as the matter is sub-judice. But I did make my position clear on this issue in my article ‘Kashmir-2020’, published in The Statesman on August 20 and 21, 2020, and in other pieces that I have written over the last two years.
Finally, my comment on the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits which rendered the talk of Kashmiriyat meaningless was not ‘political escapism’, as envisioned by Mr. Jain. That certainly was a tragedy; but the ambit of the present article did not give much opportunity for dealing with the issue at length, although I do believe that the hapless Kashmiri Pandits should be given all help they need to resettle in Kashmir, if they are willing to return.