The Government’s Kashmir Policy Needs a Reboot
Barkha Dutt recounts, in the Hindustan Times, her experience of reporting from Jammu & Kashmir, 18 years ago when two bomb blasts killed a photographer in front of her eyes. Things have changed perilously since then but the recent killing of Shujaat Bukhari’s murder proves that New Delhi’s policy on Kashmir is dangerously unsteady.
But in the 18 years that tragically bookend the murders of Pradeep Bhatia and Shujaat Bukhari, Kashmir has changed perilously. Terrorist violence and Pakistan’s role in the valley is a constant. But the security forces had been vastly successful in containing militant activity. They had deftly brought the state to a situation where the onus was on political imagination to make the next move. That never came. And the vacuum grew alarmingly large. As the use of the ‘anti-national’ label became inanely commonplace, the irony is that it is in fact politicians who have let down soldiers with an inconsistent, unthinking Kashmir policy.
Killing Conversation
Leave it to Mukul Kesavan to write a gut-wrenching piece on Bukhari’s murder and he does that deftly in The Telegraph. He takes Gauri Lankesh’s murder to highlight the similarities and the differences between the two deaths, all while commenting on the larger threat to independent journalism. These people were killed not only because of what they did but who they were, Kesavan writes: “sceptical, independent, courageous individuals who refused to be assimilated to their tribe.”
Gauri Lankesh died because someone thought that she wasn’t Lingayat enough or Hindu enough and decided that her hatred of overlapping orthodoxies made her anti-national. The current focus on the Sri Ram Sene seems to bear this out. In the same way, Shujaat Bukhari died because bigots and supremacists of one variety or another decided that he either wasn’t Indian enough or Muslim enough. Radically different though they were, Lankesh and Bukhari died trying to clear a space for conversation where individuals, not identities, could talk to each other. Their deaths diminish us.
Confusion and Horror in Kashmir
Tavleen Singh blames the BJP government’s lack of a framework of policy for solving the Kashmir issue for the tragedy that swept Jammu and Kashmir during what was supposed to have been a ceasefire for Ramzan. She writes, in The Indian Express, that Modi’s blanket statement that there would be no talking to jihadists in Kashmir as long as they continued to use violence to make their point contradicted his Independence Day speech last year that all he wanted to do was ‘embrace’ the Kashmiri people. “Hugs and the jackboot cannot form part of the same policy” and this resulting confusion has led to the jihadists increasing their attacks.
The week just ended will be remembered as the week in which the Narendra Modi government’s lack of a Kashmir policy imploded horribly. The United Nations released its first ever report on human rights violations in the Kashmir Valley. It recommends a commission of inquiry into the ‘excessive use of force’ by Indian security forces. On the day it was published in full in Rising Kashmir newspaper, its editor Shujaat Bukhari was killed by unnamed killers as he left his office in the heart of Srinagar. His two police bodyguards were also killed. On this same awful day a Kashmiri soldier going home for the Eid holidays was abducted in Pulwama and killed. Once more by unnamed killers.
A Journalist in the Valley
Nirupama Subramanian takes to The Indian Express to pen a fitting tribute to Shujaat Bukhari after his untimely demise, and also looks at the many narratives doing the rounds as to why he was killed. She writes that Bukhari was slandered by all sides in the polarised debate on Kashmir, which ironically provided him more protection than siding with one party would have, till guns entered the picture and ended his life, setting Kashmir back by decades.
Shujaat was a journalist who was trying to build ‘Rising Kashmir’ and its two sister publications into an institution. He was a peace activist with family members in government and the ruling party. He was equally at ease with mainstream politicians in Kashmir and Delhi as he was with the folks in the Hurriyat; with police and army officials as much as he was with NGOs. He wore several hats and his Twitter timeline is a register of his many preoccupations. But Kashmir today is an unforgiving place, where many-hatted people are viewed with suspicion.
Why Modi Should Visit Costa Rica
Raghavan Srinivasan has a travel recommendation for PM Naredra Modi in The Hindu: the tiny country of Costa Rica, with a population half of Bangalore’s and a GDP less than half the current market value of TCS. Why? Because despite its size, it has managed to reverse deforestation, ban single-use plastics completely and is now determined to make its economy a ‘zero-carbon’ one in the next two decades
Costa Rica has all three. Carbon reduction is baked into its national development plan. Earlier this year, it eliminated taxes on electric vehicles. More importantly, the government, partnering with civil society groups, has been preaching to the people the benefits of going electric — demonstrating that it is possible to drive to the beach and back from the capital in an electric car and working with fishermen on electrifying fishing vessels. The President too used a hydrogen fuel bus to the venue to sign the proclamation on eliminating fossil fuels.
From The Quint:
Religion, Recipe & RSS: Atul Kochhar’s Cauldron of Communal Curry
Data Says Kashmir Ceasefire Failed: Let’s Sift Facts From Fiction
Dear Arun Jaitley, Don’t be So Economical With Facts on Economy
Is the BSF Fighting Its Own Private War in Jammu & Kashmir?
How Shujaat Bukhari Earned Admiration and Respect as He Rose
Searching for Shangri-La
P Chidambaram is impressed by PM Modi’s well-crafted speech at the Shangri-La dialogue in Singapore recently and to that end, he shares a few excerpts from it with his own notes, in The Indian Express. From the importance of diversity to India’s economic growth, Modi sure had a few gems to share which left Chidambaram wondering if he’ll ever deliver such a speech in India.
The closing passages of the Prime Minister’s speech and the peroration were worthy of the occasion:“We are inheritors of Vedanta philosophy that believes in essential oneness of all, and celebrates unity in diversity. Truth is one, the learned speak of it in many ways. That is the foundation of our civilisational ethos — of pluralism, co-existence, openness and dialogue.“But, there is also a path of wisdom. It summons us to a higher purpose: to rise above a narrow view of our interests and recognise that each of us can serve our interests better when we work together as equals in the larger good of all….”How true and how appropriate those words will be if they are addressed to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Bajrang Dal, the Ram Sena, the Hanuman Sena, the anti-Romeo squads, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and the several ministers, parliamentarians and legislators who reject the ‘path of wisdom’.
Who Needs Cat Videos When you Have Diplomacy?
Amulya Gopalakrishnan writes about the impact cameras and social media have had over how foreign policy is deliberated upon, in The Times of India. She says that while TV had ‘the CNN effect’ on diplomatic stands making discussions on foreign policy matters more accessible to the public, the introduction of social media has added its own chaos to the mix with politicians using the ‘world stage’ to magnify their own image and people looking for meaning in Justin Trudeau’s socks.
[...] Since when has an international summit become such a spectacle, such a bag of laughs for the rest of us? Foreign policy now involves memes and gifs — remember Israel’s recent “why are you so obsessed with me” Mean Girls putdown to Iran? International meets provide gossip and hot mic blunders, unscripted moments and mishaps — like what really was up with Justin Trudeau’s ‘fake’ eyebrows? Was Michelle really annoyed when Barack took selfies with the blonde Danish PM? Of course, the internet will devise entertainment out of anything — like the collection of state photos made into the mesmerising ‘Kim Jong Il looking at things’.
Sampark Strategy: BJP Takes on Media-Intellectual Nexus
Swapan Dasgupta points, in The Times of India, to the rejuvenated efforts by the BJP to meet prominent people in the run up to 2019, billed as the sampark se samarthan initiative (support through contact). He opines this is due to an insecurity within the saffron fraternity that the BJP’s public image has been disfigured by an organised intellectual class which moulds the media narrative.
For a long time — and much of the previous four years — the Modi government paid little heed to this rising tide of negativism. After all, the battle in 2014 had been won despite the organised hostility of intellectuals and other so-called opinion makers. However, with the Opposition pooling all its resources for a concerted anti-Modi offensive, it is now clear that the government cannot afford to leave anything to chance. The only way it can renew its mandate is by maximising votes through an extraordinarily high turnout. All fence sitters will have to be roped in.
Inside Track: One For All
Coomi Kapoor brings you the latest news from within the hallowed halls of the Parliament in The Indian Express. Specially, look out for details on the Congress’ strategy to defeat Modi in 2019 and the little cracks developing in the new Congress-Janata Dal (S) alliance.
The Gandhi family wants Narendra Modi to be defeated in 2019 at all costs, no matter the personal sacrifice. The Congress war room is working on a strategy that an anti-BJP alliance should field joint candidates for 403 seats in 15 states in the next parliamentary elections. The party already has partners in Bihar, Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Jharkhand. Rahul Gandhi is now reaching out to new allies. He personally telephoned ailing Ajit Jogi’s wife to enquire about her husband’s health. (Jogi had left the Congress and floated a regional party.) In Assam, the Congress wants to join forces with the AIUDF and is keen on aligning with Farooq Abdullah’s National Conference in J&K. The Congress is even contemplating sharing a few seats with the NCP in Gujarat.
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