Losing the plot in Kashmir

Just as one deviates from the main artery National Highway number 1, the only surface link between Kashmir Valley and the rest of country, a taxi driver blurts out instructions: “Be careful, you are now in a virtual liberated zone. Shut window panes. Don’t flaunt media credentials. Remember, you are only visiting a relative in a village.” Twice, in past two years, this area has been in news — the deadliest suicide attack on a CRPF convoy near Awantipora in Pulwama district and a 2017 attack on pilgrims returning from Amarnath cave shrine at Batengoo (Anantnag). While the national media may be overplaying the influence of radicalisation of youth and mixing it with separatist movement, it would be an ostrich-like attitude to completely deny the phenomenon.

In Malpora village an influential family with the father a manager in a public sector bank and mother a college lecturer has been at odds to understand what prompted the son, an engineering student, to give up a lavish lifestyle and join militancy. He was killed by the Army in an encounter. “He (Basit) was once picked up by police and detained at an interrogation centre. But, he was soon released,” recalled his father. Family sources said Basit was pursuing B Tech before joining militancy soon after the killing of Burhan Wani. Sources in district administration said they had tried to convince Basit to surrender, but in vain. They said Basit’s father had also tried to bring his son. A national-level cricketer, who was enrolled in an integrated law course at Central University of Kashmir, was earlier listed by police as a stone-pelter. He was arrested and interrogated, but released after 15 days. A day before he was scheduled to join classes at the University, he went to attend the funeral of a militant in Redwani. Since then, he didn’t return home. His photos later appeared on the Internet in military fatigue, evidence to his family about his joining the terrorists.

The region has many such stories. Equally befuddling is the story of Adil Ahmad Dar, the alleged suicide bomber who blew up the CRPF vehicle. A resident of Gundhibagh village, his family belonged to the Sufi (Barelvi) sect. For many years now, the central government had been actively promoting Sufism by hosting the World Sufi Conference and other programmes. Nobody knows how a Naat Khawan, who sings praises for the Prophet, at the local dargah, could join a Deobandi terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM).

Shrinking spaces for genuine political and religious organisations, which used to keep tabs on youth, have had a telling effect. A top state government official says that the region is in the cusp of a new phenomenon. He said the “youth are no more interested in the traditional Kashmiri view of freedom. They talk about Caliphate and hail ISIS”. At a roadside shop in Wahpoh, some seven kms from Anantnag, a 21-year-old echoes the officer’s argument. “I am ready to die. I cannot sacrifice my life just for Azadi. If it is a secular movement, why no Hindu is associated with it. I pelt stones, participate in funerals of militants for the sake of Islam. Call me a terrorist but without weapons,” says the young graduate from Anantnag Degree College. This is in contrast to North Kashmir regions of Sopore and Baramullah, where strong presence of political and local religious forces didn’t allow the youth to go astray, even though many in Kashmir describe radicalisation and phenomenon of ISIS as a well thought-out ploy to distract people from the discourse in Kashmir. They also feel that it is an attempt by India to bracket the separatist movement with global terror groups to gain sympathy from the West.

Moderate Hurriyat chief Mirwaiz Umar Farooq believes that such a phenomenon, even if it exists, could not be countered by the official propaganda, but by allowing genuine political and religious leaders rooted to the ground to interact and reach out to these misguided youth. The recent ban on Jamat-e-Islami (JeI) and then on JKLF, when both the organisations had renounced militancy has complicated the situation further. A senior military officer tells that their task has been made really tough by asking them to end militancy. “We can kill militants but not militancy,” he says. With New Delhi showing no inclination for any political outreach in Kashmir, according to him, ending militancy is becoming impossible in the foreseeable future.

The MHA notification while arguing for the ban, mentions that JeI didn’t believe in electoral politics and was propagating against Sufism in Kashmir. 

Till 1987, JeI was part of electoral politics. One needs to ask who has been promoting the Salafi brand of Islam in Kashmir? Deriding this brand has of late become a fashion for strategic experts, who do not know that two icons, Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad and Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, practised it. 

Till 1989, the Valley had only two Ahl-Hadees or Salafi mosques. Now that number has swelled to more than 400, who is allowing funds to reach there? In October 2003, the official machinery facilitated lectures of Dr Zakir Nair in the heart of Srinagar city and hosted him in the Raj Bhawan. There has been a wrong tendency to merge religious schools of thought with the separatist discourse. When Ahl-Hadeesh or Salafi failed to build a discourse against separatism, the government turned its focus to promoting Sufism. The Pulwama bombing and Adil Dar must have been an eye opener for them as Americans learned a hard way when Mumtaz Qadri, also from a similar sect in Pakistan, killed the Punjab province Governor Salman Taseer in Lahore in 2011. Just a fortnight before the assassination, the US embassy in Islamabad had given some $10,000 to Qadri’s organisation to promote Sufism. 

Ironically, while India’s interaction with Islam dates back to 1400 years, most of our experts tend to be guided by the Western scholars, whose engagement with the religion began only 50 years ago. Instead of playing one group against another, the Indian government should ensure genuine, equitable political and democratic spaces to political and traditional religious groups to overcome the tide of lawlessness and the growing phenomenon of extremism.

The author is Chief of National Bureau, DNA