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Kashmir conflict-revisited

In early1980s, walking through the lush green fields, on crisp spring and summer mornings, on my way from the student hostel to the chemis...

Sunday, March 3, 2019

To the brink and back

The two countries India and Pakistan armed with nuclear arsenal almost went to war and then returned from the brink; the danger might not be yet completely over. Or maybe be it will never be. The circumstances that triggered those crisis emanated from a suicidal detonation on a main highway in Kashmir that killed over forty Indian security personnel, which involved Adil Ahmed Dar in his late and the vehicle that he rammed into a convoy was laced with huge amounts of explosives. 

That attack sent shock through the entire region followed by nationalist hysteria throughout the India with calls for boycott of Kashmiris and launch of hostilities towards Pakistan. The Indian reaction was predicated on the inference about culpability of Kashmiri with abetment and support from Pakistan. That all started within a time span that would be under any normal circumstances and in saner societies considered too short for acquisition of any irrefutable evidence to make a leap of accusation on Pakistan. But then India under current political dispensation can neither be considered normal nor rationale. 

And rationality never formed any part of Indian thinking in dealing with Kashmir. It would be foolhardy to overlook the background of the person who committed the suicide attack on the Indian security convoy in the first place. He belonged to a region in Kashmir that has been embroiled in a virtual war, particularly since India under Modi embarked on what it called a 'muscular policy'. And almost like all Kashmiris, had been a victim of excesses perpetrated by Indian security forces in the region that could be in various forms ranging from every day humiliations to outright tortures.  

To be continued....

Rajiv Kumar

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