Winds Of Change? brighterkashmir.com

It is true and historians have recorded in explicit detail that the Congress, the grand old party of the country that spearheaded the Indian Freedom Movement, left the Kashmir issue hanging fire for seventy years. During this time, successive central governments, mostly led by the Congress, fiddled with a number of ideas to lay a strong foundation for pro-India politics in Jammu and Kashmir. Being a Hindu majority region, Jammu had already decided its future after the shocking massacre of thousands of Muslims, according to one estimate. But Kashmir and even Chenab Valley were simmering. With the Dogra army brutally quelling an armed uprising in Poonch, the Muslim majority Valley smelled a communal conspiracy. Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah landed in jail after the events of 1952-53 and the Congress government at the Centre tried the money route during the times of leaders such as Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, Syed Qasim and Mir Sadiq to find a footing in the Valley. In the process of grooming its political clientele, the central government and most importantly the Congress party didn’t realize that money may be able to buy anything in the world but it can’t buy the obedience and faith of people. Then there was a relentless attack and erosion of the erstwhile state’s ‘special status’ that was ultimately reduced to a hollow shell by the time the BJP came to power in 2014. The BJP says that Congress is the mother of all evils in Kashmir which is not untrue. In the process of pursuing the politics of appeasement with the faces of pro-India politics in Kashmir, the Centre willfully allowed societal and, more importantly, economic degradation to happen right under its nose. This sowed the seeds of alienation, betrayal, and hatred among the people in Kashmir. Though the regional leaders were somewhat able to put up a facade of working democracy, the situation has today come to a point where the seventy years of social and political capital invested by New Delhi has been reduced to rubble and new options are being explored. The ruling party’s point-man on Kashmir, Ram Madhav, is on record to say that the party is looking to groom a new set of leadership, devoid of the “corrupt” Abdullahs and Muftis, in Kashmir. The process has already started with the Panchayat and BDC polls but more is to come. Will the party adopt the similar route of money and deceit used by the Congress to buy a temporary footing in the Valley? Or is there a change in the offing? Only time will tell.