It’s a season of peace politics in Kashmir. Days after President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s peace talk on Line of Control, Armymen in Lolab valley — the gateway for infiltrating militants in Kashmir — kept aside their guns and organised a peace rally.Around 3,000 villagers and children from neighbouring schools turned up and the message was loud and clear: ‘‘We want India and Pakistan to talk and end our misery once for all.’’‘‘We live in a trauma. There is hardly any villager who has not suffered,’’ said Mohammad Sarwar, a villager who neither wanted to give his last name nor the name of his village. ‘‘We want this game to end now. We are tired. Let us live.’’A Class X student, Mudasir, joined in. ‘‘Guns should go forever. Lots of youngmen have died in these years. We don’t want to die,’’ he said. ‘‘I want peace because I have seen youngmen being buried all the time.’’His school mate Riyaz Ahmad Khan, 16, thinks there should be an immediate end to this war. ‘‘There should be talks between India and Pakistan and end this problem,’’ he said. ‘‘We are against nobody. We are not against the militants or Pakistan. We are not against the Army either. We just want peace.’’The Army, however, claimed that the idea to take out this rally had come from the principal of the local high school and it began as a children’s peace rally. ‘‘We just provided them with the necessary security and arranged media coverage,’’ said Mahinder Singh, the officiating commandant of 18 Rashtriya Rifles. ‘‘People came out for peace and we helped them.’’However, the role played by the Army was evident. There were groups of surrendered militants working with the Rashtriya Rifle units, who shouted pro-peace and anti-Pakistan slogans and then the local RR unit had made elaborate arrangements to make it sure that enough villagers turned up. Even the schools in surrounding villages had been asked to participate.Almost every villager, who had come to attend the rally, loved to talk about peace but then there were several who disagreed with the role of the Army in such an effort. ‘‘There were announcements on the mosque loudspeakers. The village elders from a dozen villages neighbouring Lalpora had been specifically asked to co-operate,’’ said Ghulam Rasool Shah of Krusan village.‘‘Peace can’t be achieved through organising such rallys. The only way is a dialogue,’’ he said.‘‘We are scared. Today we have come to attend this rally and once we go back home, we know the other people (militants) would certainly ask questions. We are caught in between. Why doesn’t anybody understand that.’’ The Army denies use of force. ‘‘Those people who talk about the Army using force have vested interests. Villagers came out on their own,’’ said Major Pratap, the spokesman of the North Kashmir division of RR, Kilo Force. ‘‘People are tired of militancy and want peace. That is why the villagers came out today.’’
