If ever there was a tenuous hope that the state of Jammu and Kashmir was slowly reverting back to normalcy, it was shattered on Sunday night. The brutal slaying of 24 Kashmiri Pandits in Pulwama district shows that complacency is a fatal thing; that the terrorists in the state are far from beating a retreat and the jehad factories across the border far from shutting down; that the PDP-Congress government, well-intentioned in terms of rhetoric though it may be, is powerless — when it comes to the crunch — of protecting the citizen and defeating the militant. But it also highlights another important aspect: Nothing defeats the terrorist enterprise more than communal amity and democratic governance in J&K. Thus the attempt since the PDP-Congress government came to power in late 2002 is to deepen the communal divide. The first significant strike after the new government was sworn in was the Raghunath Temple attack in late November. The conscious targetting of Hindu families on Sunday falls into the same pattern. It follows then that the response to the latest tragedy must be one from an united front, because at the level of battling terrorism in J&K, there can be no government/opposition divide. Of course, the temptation to fish in the troubled waters of Dal Lake is always too great to be resisted and it is really no surprise that the likes of Omar Abdullah and V.K. Malhotra have already descended on its banks, with their anglers’ kits. If the purpose is to defeat the enemy it would be far more effective to face a common threat in a unified fashion at this juncture than to score petty political points. It is this common search for answers that should also characterise the Centre’s response to the Pulwama massacre. Two issues present themselves in the wake of the latest tragedy. One, are Mufti Mohammed Sayed’s plans to apply the ‘healing touch’ in the state tenable? Two, how will it impact on the peace process that has just been given a fresh lease of life under a new interlocutor, N.N. Vohra? To come to the first question, well, the J&K chief minister must know that there can be no healing if wounds continue to be opened afresh. It would, for instance, be patently absurd to invite the Pandits back to the Valley in a bid to apply the ‘healing touch’, and then have to reckon with massacres of the Pulwama kind. The chief minister must first secure the life of the ordinary citizen before talking of ‘healing’ the state. Coming to the second query — nothing should derail the search for permanent peace in the region, which is considered part of the same process that saw last October’s elections.
