Altaf Bashir Kashmir
The crises in Kashmir are majorly political in nature at the surface, and at the deeper level it has much more to do with economic wellbeing and cultural identity.
Understanding the situation of present day Kashmir is complicated. The more complicated is to gather the real fragments of the conflict and writing about it.
Every day we witness a killing, kidnapping and arbitrary arrests without account and accountability.
The people of Kashmir have become the worst sufferers of this bloody conflict that has consumed more than 80,000 lives as per the official record and destroyed countless homes and displaced hundreds of people.
It is a known fact that cultural identity did not cause the conflict in Kashmir, that the socioeconomic condition in Jammu and Kashmir were at most a secondary factor that impacted badly upon the lives of indigenous people, and that it was the political factors that led to the violent separatism.
The power elites have contributed a lot to the political conflict in Kashmir in the mid-1980s which was the key period when the combination of political mobilization and deinstitutionalization created a political fissure through decisive role of the political bigwigs.
The role of ethnicity and ethnic variables played a crucial role in mobilization the populace to franchise the vote and elect the representatives of their choice who would solve the prolonged Kashmir tangle.
That did not happen as presumed by the various ethnic parties, the politics took a deep plunged into crises and everyone was caught into quagmire, the ethnic pattern was used to mobilization in politics so that regional parties will gain majority and keep at bay the union party and flourish the way each nation progresses in the field of education, technology and innovation.
The insurgency started and progressed to the level that natives started taking arms voluntary to secede Kashmir from the clutches of brutes and oppressors.
The locals crossed the line of control with the intention to take proper arms training and return back to fight with oppressors.
This action took an ugly turn and for the five years there was no progress but bloodshed.
A lot of blood spilled on the roads that soaked the earth to sprout with new cultivation full of passion to freedom and separatism.
Later in the 1995 regional parties took a chance to contest elections and fought a war democratically but nothing changed on ground.
The rise of new intifada in 2016 and the peaceful demonstrations in the year of 2008 changed the narratives of Kashmir politics and its resolution in the later decades.
People lived in miserable conditions and the promises made by the local political parties turned out to be a farce and debauchery.
This political shenanigans winning election with one promise and cohabiting with the same party against which election was contested to form a government angered the general public who took violent means to protest against this marriage of inconvenience.
The coming to power with a majority vote in 2014 has given them ample opportunity and strength to implement brazenly what they have been wishing so fiercely over the decades to intrude the constitutional laws of Jammu and Kashmir and make it a part of India through unethical ways and means.
They succeeded to take the fiscal autonomy and their target is to change the entire demography by abrogation of article 35 A.
They have managed legal manoeuvrings its wilful murder at the altar of judiciary to satisfy their collective conscience.
The struggle will continue unless people of Jammu and Kashmir are not treated humanely and all those historical promises are not made to them.
The struggle of Kashmir will remain contested until people are not given the fair chance to choose the right over wrong themselves with a proper voting and referendum that will take place once the peace returns to the valley.
Peace never returned to the valley and history added more spectral subtext epic tales of freedom and killings.
The hope generated by the political parties of autonomy and self-rule to overcome past only to be confronted with new struggles and keep the pot boiling ever and Kashmir as disputed as ever.
