Azhar Qadri ,Tribune News Service, Srinagar, October 15;-On a fine autumn evening last week, Srinagar’s commercial nerve centre Lal Chowk was teeming with shoppers when Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde made a surprise appearance in a posh black car driven by Chief Minister Omar Abdullah. At a time when militancy is largely fading away and recurrence of street protests of 2008 and 2010 has been checked by the state police, sometimes by harsh preemptive measures, the Union Home Minister was seen shopping for fruits at a busy market in the city here.
Shinde’s shopping experience in the heart of the city was a rare event for a person of his stature in the last two decades in the Valley, where militants have carried out brazen daytime raids on security installations.The high-profile visit to the Valley was preceded in quick by visits from President of India Pranab Mukherjee, Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi, who had came with the country’s top industrialists, and Vice-President Hamid Ansari.
From most of the separatists, the reaction to these visits has been largely traditional, muted and by the book. Veteran separatist activist Shakeel Ahmad Bakshi, who heads the Islamic Students League, terms these visits as a reaction from a government which is in a “panic” mode.
“After 2010, the situation here changed from peaceful protests to hibernation and all the ploys used by the Government of India failed and fell like a pack of cards. So they became panicky about Kashmir and as a result came these visits,” Bakshi said. He said the visits are also a reaction to the “anti-Delhi stance” of the state’s ruling National Conference party which has refused to incorporate the 73rd Amendment to the JK Panchayati Raj Act.
“The existing institutions are vanishing, even the NC is becoming anti-Delhi by opposing the amendment,” he said. Bakshi said the Union Home Minister’s fruit-shopping at Lal Chowk was a message to the scared panchayat members that all was well.For some Kashmir watchers, the visits of so many high-profile men in such a short span suggest that the Centre wants to communicate something. “It is suggestive of something and does suggest something--- that Kashmir is in a transitional phase from violence to non-violence, from conflict to conflict stabilisation, from hopelessness to some hope, from absolute powerlessness to some power,” Professor Gul Mohammad Wani, who teaches Political Science at the University of Kashmir, said. He said such events had a “lot of significance” in politics, and more so when the politics involved conflict.
“The only thing that is missing in it is that in ideal times, in good times, they should engage with political leadership also. There is a certain paradox in all this and the paradox is why should we choose abnormal times for political engagement and why should we avoid normal times for political engagement,” Wani said.
During the 2010 street unrest, which witnessed widespread protests and the killing of over 120 protesters and bystanders during a police crackdown, the Central government had appointed a three-member team of interlocutors to engage with the separatists. As the interlocutors failed to break any ice with the separatists, the Centre also lost interest in engaging them again and have instead focused on measures which are more centric to youth. Among the four high-profile visits, three were centered around a major university in the Valley.
State Congress president Saifuddin Soz said there was not much to be read between the lines about these visits. “These visits came in like some kind of a routine,” he said.
The head of the Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industries, Abdul Hamid Punjabi, too seemed unexcited about any future prospects raised by these visits. “It turned out to be a damp squib. It was Congress telling Congress that there is peace. There is no significance for us as far as trade and commerce is concerned,” he said.
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