It is no more a phantom. The shadows are coming too close for comfort. Sometime back dismissed as a complete stranger to Kashmir, the knock at the door is getting stronger. Whatever it is, or is not, it’s gaining optics. And that is what, at the outset, makes the new crISIS a presence in Kashmir. A dangerous presence that can scale up violence to a mark never known before.
Will it grow with time, or soon disappear? Is it a sizeable occurrence, or just a spectacular nothing? What is the human and territorial landscape of this part-emerged, part-emerging, phenomenon? These are pointed question for those who want to understand it in terms of an entrenched military-agency dynamic in Kashmir. But for those who approach it from the point of view of politics and society, the question is differently constructed. Here the exploration is, what constitutes this crISIS-in-Kashmir, and what will become of it in Kashmir. Or may be, what will become of Kashmir because of it.
ISIS is an in depth study demanding rigrous engagement with the text of Islam, history of Muslims, and the current global power game. Its emergence in Iraq and Syria is a a layered conversation. But to locate it in Kashmir needs a mindful trip down last some years. This crISIS in Kashmir is first about Kashmir’s conflict dynamic than ISIS per se. Nevertheless, it has a potential to bring off its own dynamic. It can take a life of its own, given the shape of things in the Indian military-agency realm, and also the rise of twin radicalism. The crISIS can morph into some refined form of ISIS.
There are two factors that can lend autonomy to it in Kashmir. One negative, another positive. First the negative: New Delhi turning crazily militant. If brute force is the only way, ISIS has a fertile ground to grow on. The positive comes from the deep seated religious narrative. Like any other Muslim society Kashmir offers a subliminal welcome to the millenarian prophesies, and to the political utopia like Khilafat. The barbaric acts committed by ISIS may give a nasty fright to a Kashmiri Muslim, but its ideological content is well internalised. Right now Kashmir and ISIS are reasonably detached, but for how long! A slope within, a push without, and a sure descent into a bottomless pit of amplified violence.
Some three years back Kashmir knew it by its Mid East introduction, and that was it. But soon it started seeping in, tripping some circuits. Ironically, the first public disapproval came from a man who India considers as the hardliner of hardliners – Syed Ali Shah Geelani. That was the first aerial shot fired by the old man himself at the start of 2016; didn’t calm the ambience, rumblings persisted.
Before the 2016 public uprising some youth, particularly in Downtown Srinagar, were noticed waving black flags after the customary post-Friday-prayers-protest. It brought the Black good light in media, but was largely considered as nothing serious. Then came the mega event. A militant named Burhan was killed in South Kashmir. He had picked up arms when he was barley 15. A juvenile by all means. By the time he was killed, he had attained a status of a hero. His image signified, what some analysts crazily call ‘the new age militancy’ in Kashmir. It gave armed movement a new symbolism, and fresh blood. The entire valley exploded, and for months together Kashmir remained shut, with each day witnessing bloody clashes. New routes to heightened responses opened up in those months of closure.
Unlike the earlier public mobilisations – 2008 and 2010 – this one proved depressingly different. It didn’t generate fresh politics, but reinvented some old patterns of armed militancy. Young boys with faces masked, carrying AK-47, making public appearances, was a recap of 1990. It caught many babyish eyes. Unlike 2008, this agitation didn’t yield anything that people could take away as a mark of achievement. And contrary to 2010, there was no initiative from New Delhi giving people some consolation. The new New Delhi displayed an aggressive denial to even acknowledge the huge loss to life. That was the beginning of a fresh response from Kashmir. Boys, in teens and twenties, trickled into militant ranks like droplets from an icicle, as it warms up. And like those innocuous droplets one by one they now toss to ground and disappear into the soil. Kashmir streams with tragedy.
Since the entire symbolism, and total expression is borrowed from religion, twin displacements happened, bit by bit. Why should one lay his life for an Independant-Secular-Nationalsit ideology. That is heathenish. So the space for anything like the 1990s JKLF is squeezed to naught. The second displacement hit an unusual target. If one has to achieve martyrdom, what has this Pakistan – a modern nation-state – to do amidst us. After all nationalism is no part of Islam. This means even Hizbul Mujahideen is an unwanted legacy. A heretic! The confrontation surfaced up in the shape of a boy named Zakir Musa openly warning the old man of Kashmir’s Resistance politics – Syed Ali Shah Geelani. ” We will hang your heads in the city square”, the missive was shot through social media. Ansar Gazwatul Hind, an obscure reference from the remote archives of Muslim history flashed in the spotlight. ISIS jumped in with both feet.
The upshot is that Kashmir is becoming a locale for an exceedingly dangerous contest. The conflict dynamic can turn ISIS into an entrenched interest, serving multiple, and possibly oppositional, players. What can break this tide-in-the-making is a return to political means. That is immediate, and it involves New Delhi, Islamabad, and Hurriyat in the same order. True, the failure on political front is a dense accumulation. It now grates on a common mind to hear terms like Peace Process, and CBM. But, like it or not, politics is the lone highway that has a promise of a safe journey. Rest is not just poor, but perilous alternative. Long term, it needs courageous revisiting of the religious text generating such extreme responses. That can be done by the Muslim mind, all by itself. A case for deep reformation. A long, arduous journey; yes, without an alternative.