THE DOOR OF COMPASSION

Amarjeet Singh Dulat, the former RAW boss, and author of Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years has close friends in Kashmir politics. Dr Farooq Abdullah is one of them. He had made a request to see the imprisoned Kashmir politician and was granted the rare access last week. The Hindustan Times reported that the “quiet, top-secret meeting” to “suss out Abdullah’s mood” in “accepting the new reality of Jammu & Kashmir after the nullification of Article 370, was something that Dulat has not denied. Dulat wrote this brief piece in The Asian Age after the meeting.

- Amarjeet Singh Dulat

Kashmir, like the Internet, has been mostly in silent mode since August 5. The quietude could be deceptive. It is never easy to decipher the Kashmiri mind. Kashmiri duality has been both a liability and an asset. After August 5, it has kept everybody befuddled. Sometimes nothing needs to be done; you just live through it, wait it out. The winter, in any event, is a period of hibernation and this has been a particularly severe winter with an extended chillai kalan.

At this stage, we could claim that the security paradigm has succeeded but it(s) shelf-life has run out. If the Kashmiri is tired of mourning the demise of Article 370, Delhi too seems to be back to the mid-1990s. Militancy has not ended. Radicalisation is growing apace with hopelessness but the Islamic State, which is often talked about, is still alien to Kashmir. The J&K Police, which knows best about the goings-on in the Valley, is no longer wholly trusted. Boys laugh at the constable, yet he is the only one who knows what they are up to. There is talk of infiltration of foreigners in the last six months, yet those killed in recent encounters have mostly been homegrown. What is the Jaish, the deadliest of foreign terrorist groups, up to? The security forces, as always, have done more than their job in Kashmir. Now it is up to the politicians, as our generals have repeatedly said.

The Kashmiri is undoubtedly tired, castrated, beaten, desperately seeking normalcy. Much as he despises defeat, he is looking for a way out. In the hopelessness, he needs hope most of all. It is time to listen and to engage with the Kashmiri. Since the lockdown, an impression has gained currency that Delhi was set to demolish the Abdullah family. That would be easier said than done – trying to wish away the National Conference as deeply etched in Kashmiri consciousness as Charar-e-