The messages from Baisaran

The drumroll of death at Pahalgam, the staccato rollcall of people from small-town India who fell to the bullets of terrorists this week is enough to send shivers down the spine of the worst cynic. Shivamogga. Panvel. Visakhapatnam. Nellore. Thane. Karnal. Hyderabad. Bhavnagar. Tajang village in Lower Subansiri. Kozhikode.

From Kashmir to Kanyakumari, we are told from the day we are born, India is one. If the 2008 Mumbai attacks were intended to bring India’s financial centre, and therefore India, to its knees, the message from the perpetrators at Baisaran is simple.

Don’t try and normalise Muslim-majority Kashmir, it’s the heart of the two-nation theory, valid at the Partition and still applicable today. Hindus and Muslims are different and must live separately.

So don’t for one moment think that Kannadigas and Malayalis and Maharashtrians and Gujaratis and Haryanvis can run around the meadows of Kashmir and pretend they are in Switzerland — admittedly, this is far prettier than Switzerland — just because the Modi government has trashed Article 370 into the dustbin of history and sought to reframe its present.

But if you think about it, the message from Baisaran is really quite different. The manner in which Kashmiris have risen up to condemn this awful massacre, from Omar Abdullah to the family of pony-rider Syed Adil Hussain Shah — who wrenched the gun from the hands of a terrorist who then turned it upon the poor daily-wager — thereby sending the unequivocal message, that they would any day of the week seek peace over those pretenders pushing the cause of separateness.

For the first time in 35 years since the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits and all those years of insurgency that followed, when cries of “azaadi!” rang across the Muslim-majority valley, Kashmir’s Muslims are once again spitting upon the debris of the so-called “two-nation theory.”

They did it first in 1947, angering the newly independent Pakistan, who sent the Raiders in. They did it in 1999, tipping off the Indian Army about intruders at Kargil. They are at it again today.

The truth is that the very rude revocation of Article 370 in 2019, that spelt long periods of incarceration for many as well as the vulgar violation of their constitutionally-guaranteed rights, has given ordinary Kashmiris just a little breathing space. At last, mothers and children can experience the ordinary but precious freedom of sitting openly in parks and discuss the day’s events. Kids are going to school again — and the walls of the school are so low you can see them playing football inside. Women in full, black hijab sit and share ice-cream with male friends on the banks of the Jhelum in Srinagar. The rest of Hindustan is flocking to Amir Khusrau’s jannat — as many as two crore tourists last year.

For the moment, the debates about self-respect and autonomy and the often-fraught relationship between Srinagar and Jammu and Delhi, must be pushed to the back of the mind. Those debates are very much alive and won’t be forgotten — led by the fact that J&K has still not been given its statehood seven months after a hugely peaceful election.

For the moment, though, as they mourn with the rest of the country, Kashmiris are telling Pakistanis to not just mind their business, but to back off and leave them alone.

Notice, too, the reaction within Pakistan. Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar has been fielded in the foreign media to defend India’s charge that the terrorists are Pakistani. He ends his denial by saying that the real issue is that the “Kashmir question” is an international one and must be resolved in accordance with the 1949 UN resolutions.

Perhaps Dar didn’t notice that the Kashmiris resolved the question for him earlier this week, by participating in protests and vigils against the Pahalgam massacre which began and ended with “Not in my name.”

The Pakistani media is also reporting that this is a “false flag operation,” meaning, the Indians did it to themselves to distract from the Modi government’s problems at home. One wonders how the Mumbai attacks would have played out if Ajmal Kasab had not been caught. In any case, there’s been no movement on bringing the Mumbai guilty to justice. It’s been 17 years but those masterminds still roam free in Pakistan.

Still, a new chapter of the great game is already unfolding. As India and the US come closer together, it is worthwhile to note that Beijing has still not condemned the Pahalgam attack, except for a tweet by the Chinese ambassador to India. Clearly, the Chinese are watching as the phone lines burn in different quarters of the globe. As its stock market crashes, Pakistani will be hoping the US can restrain Modi; while Modi is likely telling Trump why he wants to give Pakistan a bloody nose.

When he will do that, how much further he will go beyond the 2019 Balakot strikes and whether anyone cares to spare a thought for ordinary people caught in the trauma of the world’s oldest cross-border tangle — are some of the stories The Tribune’s reporters are reporting these days.

Some of the most heart-rending are stories of children from cross-border marriages — the wives are Indian nationals, but the husbands are Pakistani — how they are caught in a no-man’s land that rivals the ridiculousness of Toba Tek Singh.

Perhaps the one jewel afloat in the darkness of our times is the fact that the Kartarpur Sahib corridor that leads to Kartarpur Sahib is still open — so far.

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