(Since you have taken an interest in reading about Kashmir, I have a request for you. The Quint has been working on a documentary regarding the plight of Kashmiri Pandits. We would be grateful if you could support our upcoming special project, 'Uprooted - Stories of Kashmiri Pandits' .)
There has been sort of an unstated competition in Kashmir, between key players within the state apparatus on the one hand and non-state actors on the other. It’s a competition to identify persons to be ‘weeded’ out in one or the other sense of ‘weeding out’. The state has sought to push those it considers anti-national out of government employment. Now, anti-state forces are engaged in a much more lethal sort of 'weeding out’ – of those whom they see as demographically alien 'outsiders'.
It’s important to note these recent moves and counter-moves in order to understand the backdrop for the recent spate of terrorist killings, mainly targeting Kashmiri Pandits and citizens from elsewhere.
Both sides see the ‘weeding out’ they have taken up as vital for the sort of future they want. The anti-India forces see it – to use a bitterly ironic cliche – as a life-or-death matter.
That they don’t seem to know what to do now shows clearly that the state apparatus had not even imagined (let’s not talk of the woeful lack of information, leave alone intelligence) that the other side might be doing its own list-making.
Those in authority are now flailing woefully, as in 1989-90. Back then, they at least had the valid excuse that the maelstrom had struck out of the blue.