Rangila raj

This continent-sized country with a necessarily complicated history of nation-building is no stranger to difficult moments. One such moment is upon it now. Kashmir, says an increasingly vocal corner in the national debate 8212; it8217;s of course great that a debate is happening 8212; is posing difficult, perhaps unanswerable, political/ territorial questions because the impetus is all within. Really? Then how come just a few weeks before Kashmir was so off the news that peace, and therefore further dividends, had become boring stories? The principal reason that situation has transformed into the present crisis is that while Kashmir has been volatile before, the Centre has never been as weak as now. Not even when weak coalition governments ruled India. Just recall very recent history.

First, a governor who was not even appointed by this government was allowed to handle Amarnath badly. Then, the implications of giving in to the Valley hardliners were not drawn. Then the Jammu protest was not met by immediate state response in terms of not allowing highway blockades. Then a senior representative of this government offered the Valley8217;s agitating entrepreneurs not the promise that highways will be cleared but that paramilitary will buy their apples. An assurance that obviously signalled to the Valley hardliners that there8217;s a huge deficit of political/ tactical will at the Centre. No prizes for guessing who the senior representative was. The same gentleman runs the ministry that allowed all the other lapses. In Shivraj Patil8217;s heroic ineffectuality we have the symbol and part of the substance of this government8217;s terrifying inability, when occasions have demanded, to exhibit national will. Kashmir8217;s practiced agitpropists have sensed that at no time as now has the Centre been so sold on the idea that doing nothing in time and issuing vacuous statements at all times are good strategies.

Discussions on Kashmir always bring up history. Here8217;s a little bit of history to help contextualise the current state of state response: probably not since the early 18th-century ruler Muhammad Shah Rangila, who wrote the book on awesomely ineffective security governance, has India had administrators who have been so brilliantly incapable of discharging their basic remit. Needless to say 21st-century India can8217;t afford Rangilas in government. And all responses to the Kashmir crisis must start with this recognition. Also, let8217;s ask ourselves: is India to cut and run because of some weeks of violence when years of patient diplomacy, dogged army work and good politics had blunted the hard edges in Kashmir? The country has dealt with violence within before. It has dealt with groups calling loudly for a divorce with the Union. If we decide to take a particular course on Kashmir, what will we do when politicised violence erupts elsewhere? Drawing-room solutions can look pretty and neat. Nation-building, sadly, isn8217;t always pretty and neat. It calls for clarity and determination. That8217;s what Delhi 8212; and Srinagar 8212; need.