Some time in the mid-60s, when I was a pre-teen school going boy, Minoo Masani wrote a front page article in The Statesman on Independence Day. It was titled "Darkest hour before dawn". I don't remember the words, but cannot forget its gloomy prognosis for India only 20 years after Independence. It is often said that India was granted freedom at an astrologically inopportune time, something that Rajendra Prasad pointed out but the agnostic Jawaharlal Nehru disdainfully brushed aside. Although I wonder how in the absence of a janampatri of India, astrologers could reach such a conclusion, there may actually be something to this widely held belief. The month of August rarely brings good tidings for the country.

The anniversary of Independence Day that has just gone by was overshadowed by fire-spewing separatist chants in the Kashmir Valley that threatened to return the State to the gory conditions of the early 1990s. New Delhi's inability (or ineptitude) to control the situation has led to a frightful hiatus between the Valley and the rest of Jammu and Kashmir. Egged on by a mindless, secular-fundamentalist media, India-baiters are having a field day, waving Pakistani flags on the streets of Srinagar, marching with portraits of MA Jinnah and threatening to cross the Line of Control into Muzaffarabad, ostensibly to sell fruits to the shackled inhabitants of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

Even as this naked exhibition of extra-territorial loyalty assumes increasingly macabre dimensions, all that "secular" parties in the Valley and outside can do is to blame the BJP and its associates for creating the impasse. While, predictably, the Congress Party's central leadership froths at the mouth blaming BJP for stoking Hindu passions in Jammu, even the recently deposed Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, otherwise a mature and experienced politician, has been hurling abuse at that organisation for no explicit reason. On the other hand, the State's former Deputy Chief Minister, Congressman Mangat Ram Sharma, reportedly turned hysterical during the All-Party Meeting in Jammu as he narrated the woes of his community. Now that the Congress, which swept the Jammu region in the 2002 Assembly polls, finds its duplicity has turned the people against it in both the geo-political divisions of the State, it is trying desperately to hunt with the hounds and run with the hare.

Why are the separatists in the Valley succeeding in their diabolical stratagem while the political establishment of the country is on the defensive? The answer lies in the fact that land for the Amarnath Shrine Board was never the real problem as far as the separatists are concerned. They were searching for an issue that could be twisted around to regain the upper hand they had lost during the last few years. I believe alarm bells rang in the top echelons of the Hurriyat and their Pakistani mentors particularly after the huge success of Junoon's concert on Dal Lake some months go. Despite the firm disapproval of fundamentalists, the Pakistani band's sufiana-pop and message of peace reverberated across the Valley with tens of thousands cheering the group's open-air performance. Junoon's phenomenal success suggested that the vice-like grip of the separatists was loosening even in their core area, namely Srinagar city.

In all fairness, it must be said that Ghulam Nabi Azad ran a fine administration, reaching out to people of both regions while steadfastly adhering to a nationalist platform. Although his own record in office was largely creditable, Azad's success evidently perturbed his coalition partner Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and his ambitious daughter Mehbooba, who have always had a soft corner for separatist groups. The PDP's rapid somersault on the Amarnath land transfer clearly establishes that the party sought to get in sync with separatists as soon as it smelt a political opportunity. Consequently, both the Congress and Farooq Abdullah's NC have been upstaged notwithstanding Omer Abdullah's competitively communal utterances.

The events of the last few weeks transparently reveal that the writ of the Government has ceased to run in the Valley. While the Army was deployed in massive strength to ensure that traffic movement on the State's lifeline National Highway 1A remained unaffected, that did not deter Kashmiri politicians from crying wolf by conjuring up the myth of its blockade by Hindu mobs. Rampaging protestors in the Valley, however, were treated with kid gloves. It was not till the scheming masterminds of secessionism operating out of Srinagar announced their plan to cross the LoC at the head of truckloads of fruit that the Government, embarrassed by its international implications, briefly cracked down.

The wily separatists know that a weak-kneed Government, a thoroughly incompetent Home Minister, the ruling alliance's minority-appeasing agenda, and the "secular" media's vocal sympathy for merchants of terror, will ensure that the local administration bends backwards to mollycoddle them -- possibly even direct security forces to shower pro-Pakistani mobs with rose petals rather than resort to coercive crowd control methods. Secure in this belief, they can keep upping the ante in the Valley so that jihadi infiltrators from across the LoC find fertile ground conducive to getting logistic support from the local populace. Few people in the rest of India acknowledge that Kashmiri agitators have no concrete grievance. Their economic conditions are far superior to that of the average Indian, thanks to 60 years of financial pampering by the Centre at the expense of the rest of the country.

Therefore, at the risk of sounding rabid, I wonder if would not have been a good idea to let the marchers cross the LoC last week and firmly seal the crossing thereafter. This may appear insensitive, but how can any true Indian feel sensitised towards a bunch of disloyal people who have no respect for other's sentiments, refuse to allow 100 acres of barren land to be used for temporary structures for an annual pilgrimage, chant 'Azadi' and 'Hindustan Murdabad' at the slightest provocation and work full-time to facilitate depredations of terrorists?

This is not a Hindu-Muslim issue and it is remarkable that no Muslim in the rest of India has ever demonstrated an iota of sympathy for Kashmiri separatists. The issue is starkly one of secessionism versus national integration. In this confrontation, India's integrity must prevail, whatever the cost. If that means Assembly elections have to be postponed indefinitely, so be it. Pluralist democracy is not an instrument for combating secessionism; in fact, democracy has been grossly abused both by separatists and spineless "mainstream" politicians of the Valley. Sadly, the Indian establishment will neither recognise the truth nor act in a manner befitting a country that aspires to be a world power. More tragically, India is a soft state that gets softer with each passing year. On Independence Day we are subjected to routine incantations that include paying obeisance to Jawaharlal Nehru and his "Tryst with destiny" speech. I wonder whether the architect of India's misfortune ever privately regretted the pathetic destiny he personally shaped for this country.

Courtesy: www.dailypioneer.com, August 17, 2008