Amid the ongoing uprising in Kashmir, New Delhi has taken several decisions in a bid to reach out to people in the Valley – from All Party Meeting headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the decision to send All Party Delegation to Kashmir. But, on ground, the situation continues to deteriorate with each passing day, writes Manzoor Ahmad Ganai
|| MANZOOR AH. GANAI
Kashmir uprising is nearing two months and during these testing time we have already lost 70 persons to bullets and pellets, while as more than 7000 people have suffered injuries, many of them on the verge of losing their vision permanently. The methods employed for crowd control besides being contrary to all civilized behavior are heart rendering. This “barbaric method” of crowd control adopted by the forces is both unheard of and shocking to the civilized society. Nowhere do we find in the civilized world bullets being fired on unarmed protesters. Prime facie, it is clear to everybody that the force is not used to scare away protestors. The usual method adopted for dispersing agitating people should stop.
Here it is not even a case of firing below the belt to avoid fatal injuries. What is obvious and clear from all the firing incident is that the force is being used to cause grievous injury to a person notwithstanding the repeated instructions from the Chief Minister for adopting Standard Operating Procedures. This is proven by the fact that all casualties have occurred as a result of bullet or pellet injuries on vital parts of the bodies of the victims. The so called non-lethal weaponry in the form of pellet guns has also been used so recklessly that it has wrecked havoc on the lives of the victims. One of the glaring aspects that have emerged from the scenario is that the forces are ill-trained in the method of crow control. When the uprising was going on in Kashmir, the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi, on August 15 talked about everything under the sun in his speech but Kashmir.
There was no mention of people who have suffered – the wailing mothers and sisters and grieving fathers. Modi’s silence on Kashmir was shocking as well as astonishing to Kashmir Watchers. Then there was All Party Meeting on Kashmir crisis – the credit for it goes to Ghulam Nabi Azad, the leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha, who rightly said while the crown of India (Kashmir) is burning the heat doesn’t seem to reach New Delhi (Prime Minister). The people of Kashmir were keenly watching the proceedings of APM and expecting many things that would heal some of the wounds received by Kashmiri’s apart from hoping to see a way out of this turmoil! Nothing of this kind came out of the meeting. Instead what made headlines about the meeting was the infamous expression of “dou kameez pyjamas” made by PDP’s Muzaffar Hussain Baig and his “hallucination” that ISI was making inroads in Kashmir. He was hell bent to impress upon the members that what is happening in Kashmir was going owing to Islamization as the driving force behind it.
He vainly tried to link the present uprising in Kashmir to Arab Spring and conflicts across the Middle East, forgetting the recent turmoil of 2008 and 2010. While nothing concrete could be achieved through the APM the meeting of State opposition leaders with the Prime Minister too proved to be an exercise in futile. Though the delegation apprised the Prime Minister of the ground realities in Kashmir (as if Modi was unaware of these realities), requesting the PM to send an All Party Delegation to Kashmir to meet all stake-holder while pitching for ban on use of pellet guns as a means of crowd control. After the APM the union Home Minister visited Srinagar 2nd time during the period of less than one month.
It was again not well planned and well thought out according to many Kashmir watchers because the Home Minister again went on to met the same delegation of National Conference led by Omar Abdullah, Congress delegation led by GA Mir and some independent MLA’s like Mr Tarigami and Ghulam Hasan Mir. The Home Ministers visit to Kashmir should have been planned and envisioned in a method and manner that could result in his meeting with other important stake holders in Kashmir. The refusal of separatists to engage in any sort of dialogue with Centre should not be taken as the final word because there is always room for reason to prevail and efforts should have been made to reach out to all the concerned whose intervention would help in resolving the present crisis.
(Manzoor Ahmed Ganai is advocate, J&K High Court).
