After laying a wreath at the funeral of his four men recently martyred in J&K, Gen Rawat delivered a stern warning to all separatists and their supporters. He cautioned them against deliberately interfering with the conduct of legitimate counter-terrorism operations of the Army by organised stone-pelting—designed to help the terrorists escape, distract our forces and cause needless casualties.
These stone-pelters have deliberately been seeking to provoke the security forces to try and create collateral damage and casualties, which can then be cynically exploited to trigger large-scale rioting and arson. Here are a set of cynical manipulators, clearly emboldened by the humane treatment and restraint exercised so far by our security forces.
As was expected, there was a storm of protests unleashed by the separatists who tried to twist the Chief’s words out of context. Surprisingly, even some national and mainstream opposition parties deliberately tried to instigate unrest over these very sober and highly called-for remarks by the Chief.
I had taken part in counter-terrorist operations in J&K for over a decade. I had operated in Kishtwar and volatile districts of Rajouri and Poonch when the terrorist movement was at its peak. In 2001, the heaviest casualties of over 2,000 had been inflicted on the terrorist tanzeems.
It was well understood in J&K that whenever an encounter started, the civilians would prudently vacate that area to avoid being hit by stray bullets or sustain collateral damage. The Army in turn confined its weapons’ usage to infantry, small arms alone. There has been no instance of the Indian Army employing offensive air power, tanks or artillery in J&K.
The same are freely used by the Pakistani Army in Balochistan, Sindh, FATA and NWFP. Collateral damage is the least of their concerns. For Operation Zarb-e-Azb, they deliberately drove some 18 lakh civilians out of their houses. We heard no complaints from any human rights organisation about these excesses.
The same HR organisations, however, had been hyper active in J&K and India. Their primary purpose has been to tie down the Indian Army’s hands and feet, and stymie its legitimate operations to an extent it cannot even use its small arms effectively.
Senior Army commanders were recently forced to apologise for shooting down wayward civilians who had deliberately defied orders to stop at a checkpoint. This emboldened the separatists and their supporters who have now begun to exploit the restraint exhibited by our forces.
What has so emboldened the separatists in the Valley? It is the support and incitement they have been receiving from the leftist liberal sections of the media and the political spectrum in India, and the machinations and money of the ISI.
Frankly, the primary cause of all problems in the Valley has been its abject ghettoisation and the virulent communalism that has been injected into this peaceful vale. This was once a haven of syncretic and tolerant Sufism. By and large, the Valley was peaceful during the Partition —till the Pakistanis sent in the Waziri and Mehsud Pathan tribesmen there to “liberate” it. It was some strange liberation.
It entailed the complete torching of towns, their abject loot and plunder and the rapes of women from seven to 70. Sheikh Abdullah had lamented: “The raiders had turned our mosques into brothels to satisfy their lust with our women”. He had said that with the last drop of blood he would oppose the two-nation theory.
Today, that same two-nation theory is being revived in the Valley with a vengeance. The first step was to Wahhabise the Valley, destroy its Sufi culture of tolerance (inject wholesale communal hatred and poison), and drive out the Pandit community in a brazen act of ethnic cleansing and religious intolerance. What was wrong in Gujarat is equally wrong in J&K, but we were supposed to not whisper about it, and instead condone this communal hatred and violence.
What is at stake in the Valley is a principle on which our Republic is based—secularism. We simply can’t afford to let some separatist hotheads inject the poison of communal hatred in the Valley and turn it into a vast ghetto where the rule of law ceases to prevail.
That has happened equally in the ghettos of Paris and Brussels which have become no-go areas for the French and Belgian police. Terrorists in J&K, too, are trying to make these ghettos no-go areas for our security forces. We cannot let some five million Muslims of the Valley walk out of the Republic on the basis of religious fanaticism.
What right would we then have to the continued loyalty of some 175 million loyal and patriotic Indian Muslims—whose forefathers had voted with their feet at the time of Partition—to stay back in a plural and secular India rather than migrate to theocratic Pakistan.
What is at stake in the Valley, therefore, is the principle of secularism itself and we cannot afford to weaken our will and flag or fail in our duty to uphold the secular nature of our Republic. What we are witnessing in J&K is no “freedom struggle”. It is rabid communalism, rioting and arson—plain and simple.
gagandeep.bakshi@yahoo.com