Thread by @tallstories

Long overdue, long thread from #Kashmir from my visit to the Valley from Aug 20-25.

It's surprising how many people believe India's Kashmir problem is solved.The reality on the ground is entirely different, & once the fog of celebration clears,the challenges may become apparent.

For one, India has no friends left in Kashmir. Even those who called themselves “moderates”, those who pushed India's case in the Valley, are angered so much that they say they have to rethink everything they stood for.

Even in N.Kashmir, where the Army had built a solid relationship with people, a youth sitting in the waiting room of the office of a district's deputy commissioner said: “The India story is over for us”. I found this sentiment voiced again and again, in many places in the Valley.

It is not so much about Article 370 as it is about the fear of demographic change, the “loss of identity”, the loss of land rights, the loss of being “special”. The demotion of the state to a union territory has rubbed in the humiliation.

At the time I visited, people were still shocked, stunned by the turn of events, including the communication blockade, now in its fifth week, which they described as a “brazen” move to cut them out of the discussion altogether.

“Flood” and “ volcano” were common metaphors to describe how the anger would burst when communications are restored.

There are two broad ways in which people expressed their anti-India response. One was typical of south Kashmir, from where the 2015 militancy began, and also of young people everywhere in the Valley.

In a Pulwama village, for instance, two students who once thought of themselves as budding political leaders, and networked ceaselessly with mainstream politicians said India had broken what little trust it enjoyed in #Kashmir.

Both said what had happened "will boost militancy”. While one said the only way fwd was militancy, the other said he wasn't an advocate of violence, but what happened had angered him deeply. He said: “I was never for Pakistan.You've pushed me into its arms”.

In another village, people showed their “martyrs' cemetery” - a recent one where 8 people from the 2016 agitiation were buried – & said none would betray their memory.

There was an older one with graves from the 90s. All these people didn't sacrifice their lives for nothing, they said. Villagers said the Army, much more visible now even by Kashmir stds, was picking up 4-5 boys every night, handing them over to cops,who wld release them next day

I met one boy who had just been released. There was a red swelling on his arm where he said he had been beaten. At a few places, the villagers had cut trees and placed them across the roads to prevent security forces from entering.

One person alleged family members of those picked up were being asked to remove the trees as condition of release but I asked around in the village and could not find anyone like that.

The other kind of response was from people in Srinagar. Even those who considered themselves “pro-India” are angry at their “betrayal by Delhi”.

Among those who'd never throw stones/shout Azadi slogans, but who built a middle of the road politics, supporting protests as well as held out for accommodation with Delhi, there was shock that there was no “spontaneous uprising” on the streets in the manner of '16.

They nurse the hope that Pakistan or “someone else” will "do something". There is almost a wish for war. As one journalist put it: “The appetite for violence has grown”. There is dejection. US President Donald Trump is a hero.

There is dejection that world leaders side with India.

But if the first challenge is that virtually the entire population of the Valley has now turned anti-India, the next is that there are virtually no politicians left in the Valley who can sell Delhi's scheme to the people.

Anyone who offers themselves as Delhi's face in Srinagar would have to be high on courage. People said: “Good all these leaders and politicians have been put in jail. They feathered their own nests by selling our fate to Delhi. They had it coming."

"Hum ko chaar thappad padey, par inko bhi eik-do toh padey hain na. Achchi baat hai (We've been thrashed, but it's good that these politicans have also been slapped up)"

By arresting mainstream leaders, activists, lumping them with separatists, and creating a binary in which “You are with us or against us”, the govt too has left virtually no political space for “collaborators”.

Because it has great resources, the government may eventually find a politician or two, or even create a new lot of leaders in the manner it found candidates to run for the 2018 panchayat elections, to take the plan forward.But the going for them will hardly be easy.

At the moment, Kashmir is anything but normal and all assertions to the contrary, whether by officials or media, are from la-la land. True, no violent uprising, but life, even the post-2016 one that people had got used to, is paralysed.

There is no curfew in any part of Kashmir. There are restrictions under Sec 144 but these are loosely enforced. Except Fridays, no restrictions on mobility except for movements of large groups of people and gatherings.

On the highways, there were plenty of private cars on the roads. But no public transport. Markets were shut.People said it was because of a “civil curfew”, a bandh, self-imposed because there was no call for it, as the leaders who normally do that are all detained.

The government will eventually tire out the people, but if there ever was a plan to win them over, it has become much more difficult now, if not impossible, than it was before August 5.  
End of thread. Thank you for reading.