Is Revenge The Only Answer In Jammu And Kashmir?

A refrain that plays out like a background score whenever anyone speaks up against the government’s actions in the Valley is this: “But where were you when the Pandits…?” On the surface, this sounds very legitimate, a humanitarian cry from the heart. Only, how to handle so much milk of human kindness when it flows from people who think the lynchings of Pehlu and Tabrez and Akhlaq are just stray ‘incidents’ on the path to Ram Rajya?

How to attribute compassion behind this sudden Pandit love when the victims bleeding to death after a lynching are invariably the first to be arrested by our humanitarian cops even as the mob is felicitated by ministers?

Everyone knows the Congress and various other stakeholders have failed the Kashmiri people abysmally over the decades. What stops this government from looking for imaginative and empathetic solutions now? Peace is not hard to broker if there’s a will.