Rise with shrine

The crisis in Jammu and Kashmir requires all participants to make an effort to step outside their well-defined comfort zones, both in the national interest and in their own. The snowballing protests show two things: Jammu and the Valley are growing ever more distant from each other, and both areas contain significant groundswells of dissent that is not being permitted expression through politics-as-usual. That this was the case in Srinagar and the Valley was only surprising in that the protests last month came after a prolonged period of quiet that had led to optimism among the state8217;s political class. At the time these columns pointed out the danger of assuming that periods of peace mean underlying problems are being addressed. This false hope clearly extended to thinking about Jammu as well, and now we see open dissension there leading to unprecedented action: as Mufti Mohammed Sayeed has pointed out, the Valley has never been physically isolated before, even during wars and natural disasters.

All parties must understand that this crisis means they themselves might become irrelevant. In many such cases 8212; Assam, as one example, the West Bengal hills as another 8212; we have seen previously representative figures Mahanta, Ghisingh marginalised as popular movements run their course. Their departure creates a new, usually more radical, political space; and that is often filled by charismatic figures from the movement, whose position is built on a reputation for resistance. Such men do not negotiate well. This is something that should scare regional and national parties alike; it is a pity that the former were not part of the prime minister8217;s all-party meeting, for it is certain that they are playing for the highest of political stakes now: it is no longer a question of their popularity, but one, perhaps, of viability, of their very survival.

The mass resignation of the members of the Amarnath Shrine Board, so as to give the government space to manoeuvre in designing solutions, is the sort of action that may well be required at this point. The situation has already been communalised through cynicism and ham-handedness; it has already, perhaps, spilled over into national politics; at the very least, the compromises that the prime minister manages to pull off should be of sufficient heft to ensure that we are not faced with a new set of young, radical leaders who might prove less rational than those they are replacing.