Kashmir’s new normal: tourists, turmoil, and rising militancy!

Five years is indeed a long time to change everything in a state, more so in Jammu and Kashmir after the abrogation of Article 370. For those who have not been to the beautiful state of lakes, icy peaks, and verdant slopes for a long time or those who have memories of films like “Kashmir ki Kali” that displayed abundant natural beauty and a languid pace, the trouble-torn state has changed even in comparison to what it was before August 2019.

Then, Kashmir had a visible presence of the army that was meant to scare brick-batters, protestors, and stray gun-toting mujahideen that had escaped the security dragnet around the Srinagar valley. Now it is a contradictory mix of a high volume of tourists from states like Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan that roam around cheek by jowl with gun-wielding security personnel of anti-militant organisations like Rashtriya Rifles (RR). Is this normal?

This bizarre contradiction is heightened by the sudden spurt in the killings of officers and men of the Indian army in the dense jungles of Kathua, Doda, and Reasi districts in the Jammu region—seemingly far away from the Kashmir valley. These heightened encounters and killings have increased traffic snarls due to the movement of troops and army convoys to areas considered close to the border with Pakistan like Sopore, Baramulla, and Kupwara. When the army convoy travels, all civilian traffic comes to a halt or follows them.

For the uninitiated, there is a pall of fear that hangs over the valley, but the tourists seem unfazed by the looming danger to their lives. Anywhere else in the world, the tourists would have been taking the first transport out of the valley after reading reports that the militants could have escaped from the forests of Kathua to crowded Srinagar. Not here. In fact, many of them come here to give meaning to BJP’s attempts to integrate a region that, in the view of the ahistorically minded, was not part of the country. Due to this reason, it is possible to hear loud music and chants of “Har Har Mahadev” in the morning. This is unusual. In the past, one heard only the call from the muezzin to the faithful to come to the mosque for offering prayers, never anything else. That has changed. On Srinagar’s boulevard road, it is possible to hear the two noises seriously competing for attention and primacy.

Srinagar’s hub, Lal Chowk, named after Moscow’s Red Square, is crawling with tourists who are looking for a bargain in Kashmir’s pherens (robes) and dry fruits. Unlike in the past, it is possible to hear an assortment of different dialects emanating from all kinds of shops. By any yardstick, this is real progress. It is reflective of the national integration the force of the gun has been able to achieve. Is it the new normal where shoppers and tourists will joyfully coexist with armored cars and gun-wielding security personnel? Will business and profit triumph over political turmoil? No easy answer till the assembly elections take place.

At Srinagar’s Ahdoos Hotel, which was the only safe zone during the height of militancy in the 90s, business is good. Lovers of Kashmir’s wazwan converge in large numbers at this restaurant. Social media has done wonders for Ahdoos’s profile. Increased profits have added a new sheen to its dark interiors. In the past, the darkness added to the gloom outside, but now it holds a different meaning. “Yes, we are making more money than ever before,” says the clerk at Ahdoos’s confectionary shop, Crème.

As most of the tourists are from within the country—and many of them vegetarians—there is a significant change in the food landscape of the state. So many vegetarian restaurants have sprung up that they challenge the image of the Kashmir valley as a state with some of the best non-vegetarian cuisine. So disgusted and angry was a local youth with the spurt in vegetarian outlets that he said, “We Kashmiris were not born to eat this kind of food.” Expectedly, there are only a few Kashmiris who visit these new food outlets.

Not very far away from Srinagar and Gulmarg, where the normalcy of the new Kashmir is sold to the rest of the country, there is a frenetic search for the militants who killed so many of our brave officers and men. There is a lack of clarity at the upper echelons of the government about who these terrorists are and from which sector they have sneaked in to cause trouble.

The standard practice is to call them infiltrators, as the government does not want to show that they could be Kashmir’s indigenous terrorists driven by their own agenda to disrupt peace, which is tenuous at the best of times. Most of these terrorists are armed with sophisticated weaponry and have the benefit of someone providing them with the coordinates of their targets and the troops of the Indian army.

Government sources never claim that there are too many infiltrators. For many years, this writer has been hearing that they are only in double digits—the rest have been accounted for, they would say. Though there have been a number of encounters that have neutralised many militants, what is not known is who and how many entered the dense forests that were free from terrorism all these years.

Why has terrorism surged again? One big reason is that state elections are due in the next couple of months—the Supreme Court wanted them to be conducted soon—and a peaceful organisation would be a manifestation of the success of the narrative that the abrogation of Article 370 contributed to ending terrorism in the valley.

The recent rise in violence and high casualties punctures holes in this thesis. What is visible in the valley is that the government just cannot take the ordinary people of the state for granted. That’s the reason why there is a security person every few paces.

In the past few months, the state government has been emboldened by the successful conduct of the parliament elections. It served not just to flaunt the government’s ability to hold polls without the state lapsing into violence, but it also contributed to devaluing the existing state leadership of the Abdullahs and Muftis. The Election Commission of India claims that it is preparing the electoral rolls to host the first elections in 10 years, but would the state government and Home Ministry trust them or demand a postponement?

The big question is—how normal is Kashmir’s new reality that has so many tourists, but it still faces deaths of young officers and men. Will the government in Delhi brazen out these encounters and hold assembly elections finally?