Simmering Discontent .

A friend of mine sent me a link to a beautifully written article by a london based writer favoring separatism and claiming that election 2008 were farce, in a live situation created by the learned writer,he brings in a character called “Gulla” who thinks Mr Omar Abdullah undermined the election and said that election were just to build roads and bulidings. No further comments on that ?. There was a time if someone wrote that Kashmir was a disputed territory he would either be maimed for life or sent to Tihar. We have come a long way since the 50s and that proves the resilience of our democratic system. I differ on several of his observations. As a student of politics I feel sovereignty has lost much of its meaning in the present day changed global canvass or else why would America be in Iraq and Afghanistan or almost everywhere. Strategically Kashmir is every important and nothing will suite US interests better than Kashmir being independent. That will cut off the Karakoram Highway and not give access to China to the warm waters of the Indian Ocean. Then they can easily contain India, China, Russia and secure their economic interests in the Mid East. For Gods sake we don't want to get trampled in between.

The present situation was precipitated by even separatists for very narrow political ends. It misfired. Probably they did not foresee that it will bring the people to the ballot box and bring your sepratist leaders's to jump in to the electoral fray. The shrewdness has been replaced by naivety and political astuteness by uncanny adolescence. Kashmir once again is a loser.

You will very soon get to read such sordid stories of a new separatist leader planning to contest election .And yet, the society accords these parasites recognition and legitimacy. Pitiably, we seem to have accepted this phenomenon as a part of life and are scared even to raise our voices. we have heard sermons for past 20 years and when our leaders make lofty pronouncements it sounds as if they r abusing the entire society. And if something meaningful is said or done, you dismiss it by contempt (Read also the learned writer’s outburst against the present CM) The fact is that separatists have lost their credibility because all of them suffer from foot in the mouth disease. They don’t seem to realize tat they cannot play Gods and change everything overnight by mere rhetoric. Democracy is a mater of attitude n faith. Though it may vary from place to place n form one person to another, the benchmark continues to be “Of the people, by the people, for the people”. And what do we get instead, the gullible being hoodwinked by separatists.

The society is going through a very fast churning. Insurgency may have consumed part of one generation, but it has brought some awakening to the rest. The redeeming feature being that it is educated, perceptive and highly sensitive. It understands its role in the changed global context. It recognizes hypocritical religious bigots who had hypnotized it by the extremist mantra. It knows that resilience alone is the key to his success. Given an opportunity, it may dump the whole lot of the present garbage in the incinerator of history and evolve a system that we all will be proud of. Difficult but not impossible!